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MATRIMONY, 
IMPOTENCY AND STERILITY, 

ANATOxMICALLY, PHYSIOLOGICALLY 

AND 

MEDICALLY EXPLAINED, 

WITH 

A COMPREHENSIVE EXPOSITION 

OF THE 

NATURE AND MODERN TREATMENT 

OF 

SYPHILIS, SECONDARY SYMPTOMS, GONORRHOEA, 
GLEET, STRICTURES, WHITES, SEMINAL WEAK- 
NESS, NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS. 

A.\D 

ALL THE CONSEQUENCES ARISING FROM MASTURBATION, 
&c. &c. 



By HEffHY FAWCETT, J!. I>., M. R. C. §• 

Author of " The Bachelors 9 Guide" Also, Author of "A new 

Treatise on the Practicability of Removing Strictures 

by Absorption." 



u He who in pleasure's downy arms, 
Ne'er lost his health or youthful charms, 
A hero lives ; and justly can, 
Exclaim, * In me, behold a man.' " 





^Sts^Sf^fe** rf 

\^^^^/U^yL M«*eJc /4. /fob. 






Southern District of New- York, ss. 

Be it Remembered, that on the second day of January, Anno 
Domini, 1844, Henry Fawcett, of the said District, hath 
deposited in this Office the Title of a Book ; the Title of 
which is in the words following, to wit : — " Matrimony, 
Impoicncy and Sterility, Anatomically, Physiologically and 
Medicinally explained ; with a comprehensive exposition 
of the Nature and Modern Treatment of Syphilis, Secon- 
dary S>/mp'oms, Gonorrhoea, Gleet, Strictures, Whites. 
Seminal Weakness, Nocturnal Emissions, and all the 
consequences arising from Masturbation, $-c, $c" By 
HENRY FAWCETT, M. D., M. R. C. S., Author of 
" The Bachelor's Guide ;" also Author of " A New Treatise 
on the Practicability of Removing Strictures by Absorp- 
tion." 

" He, who in pleasure's downy arms, 

Ne'er lost his health or youthful charms, 

A hero lives; and justly can, 

Exclaim, 'In me, behold a man. 1 " 

The right whereof he claims as Author and Proprietor, in 
conformity with an Act of Congress, entitled " An Act to 
amend the several Acts respecting Copy-rights." 
CHAS. D. BETTS, 
Clerk of the Southern District of New-Ycrk. 



1 



•: \ a 






INTRODUCTION. 



The Profession and the Public have been so inun- 
dated with works pretending to describe and cure 
those ailments which are the subject of the pre- 
sent treatise, that some reason may be de- 
manded to justify the obtrusion of a new work 
upon the already surfeited appetite of the age, 
my ground of defence, may, perhaps, appear sin- 
gular, as it rests materially on the multiplicity of 
the kind ; for, it is notorious, that, with a few ex- 
ceptions, they are the offspring of interested em- 
pirics, whose object has been, through these media, 
to puff into reputation certain nostrums, of which 
the proprietorship is vested in themselves. Hence, 
it follows, as a natural consequence, that whatever 
be the disorders treated of, however opposed in 
their nature and symptoms, and however antagonist 
in their operation, the same treatment is directed, 
and the same medicine is prescribed. Thus a 
reference to such pages will exhibit venereal com- 
plaints, epilepsy, cancer and even madness, as being 
made to acknowledge the talismanic influence of 
the same omnipotent remedy, alike applicable to, 



IT INTRODUCTION. 

the robust and feeble, the plethoric and emaciated, 
in all stages, varieties and climates. I might 
quote many instances in proof of this position, 
where the nostrum venders having compounded a 
something, which perplexes analysis, immediately 
write an elaborate descant upon its assumed pro- 
perties, and no sooner have they succeeded in 
forcing it into circulation, than in the arrogance 
of triumphant cunning, they adopt the ejaculation 
of Ovid— 

" Jamque opus exegi, quod nee jovis ira, nee ignis, 
Nee poterit ferrum, nee edax abolore vetustas." 

Or, perhaps, greet us in simple English — f 

" Let the wise of all ages e'en langh as they will, 
A well furnished purse is the best proof of skill."* 

A very celebrated writer observes, " that those 
who grow rich by administering physic, are not to 
be numbered with them that get money by ad- 
ministering poison." I do not mean, however, to 
detract from the authenticated merits belonging 
to certain medicines, the sanative influence of 
which, upon specific disorders, has been proved 
and sanctioned by competent judges. My object 
is merely to point out to the unwary and inexpe- 

* Among the most general modes of publicity which the empiric 
adopts, is that of the hand-bill ; this is an old fashion, for in the 
" March to Finchley," Hogarth makes the anxious countenance of a 
Sergeant who is micturating against a wall, suddenly illumined by 
the sight of Dr. Rock's advertisement of an infallible cure for a 
disease, the most acute sensations of which he at that moment 
experiences. 



INTRODUCTION. T 

rienced, the fallacy as well as the dangerous effects 
of those empiricisms which would attack all dis- 
eases with the same medicine; a practice, to speak 
of it in the least unfavourable terms, is not only 
inconsistent with established principles, but even 
opposed to common sense. 

My attention for many years past, has been 
exclusively directed to the treatment of venereal 
diseases, and such complaints as arise immediately 
from a disorganization of the generative system, 
whether constitutional or acquired. In this state- 
ment I must not be considered to cast the slightest 
imputation upon the skill of the authorized mem- 
bers of our profession in the treatment of such 
complaints ; on the contrary, I mean simply to 
infer, that, as in all important undertakings, much 
can be effected by a division of labour ; so it may 
reasonably be assumed, on my own part, that no 
less can be the result of an unwearied attention 
to that particular branch of study, wherein I offer 
to the Public, the knowledge and experience of a. 
long and extensive practice ; besides, I am further 
actuated in offering those remarks from the rapid 
and unprecedented sale of fifteen thousand copies 
of the " Bachelors' Guide,"* also ? over twelve 

* A worthless fellow who kept a bookstand in Wall-sfeef, pub-, 
lished "The Bachelors' Guide" under the name of " The Green 
Book," and represented it as the production of R J. Cuiverwellof 
London, and he sold ten thousand copies of it in this city ; on that 

l* 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

thousand copies of my work on " Sterility, Bar- 
renness, &c, &c." This is the best test of pub- 
lic opinion, not only in reference to the accuracy 
of the principles those works contained, but also 
their practical value and utility. It is well that 
the publication of works of this tendency have at 
length aroused the slumbering fears and anxieties 
of the Clergy, the Heads of our Public Schools, as 
well as parents and guardians, and those more 
nearly interested in the watchful training of the 
rising generation. 

Let it not be imagined, that indiscriminate cen- 
sure is applicable, and deservedly to be lavished 
upon the conductors of those establishments des- 
tined to the elementary instruction of youth. The 
most watchful care — the most sedulous attention, 
is often found insufficient to arrest the develop- 
ment of depraved habits. That which every 
thoughtful person must deplore, has been the 
ignorance, not the apathy, but the perfect uncon- 
sciousness hitherto displayed on this subject. 

The following statement is instructive, although 
the mere mention of its revolting peculiarity, is 
enough to startle a father into unwonted anxiety 
for his child, when I say that out of three hundred 

account, I have avoided, as much as possible, adopting the same 
strain of language and style which I made use of in the Bachelors 
Guide; but, by a reference to that book, it will be immediately 
perceived Ui&t both works were written by the same author, 



INTRODUCTION. VI* 

and seven cases of sexual infirmity, the result of 
self-pollution, which have passed under my review 
during the space of one year, tivo hundred and 
sixty voluntarily informed me, or in answer to the 
question, admitted they had originally contracted 
the habit at school. I leave this statement to pro- 
duce its own results. Public attention is at length 
awakened to one of the most secret, yet deadly 
and fatal causes of depopulation, premature mor- 
tality, the production of a delicate, sickly, diseased 
and puny offspring — the elements of social decline 
and of national decay ; and that man must indeed 
be devoid of every generous impulse (and for such a 
one his country well may blush) who would not 
hail and urge onward in its course, every move- 
ment which has for its object the detection of those 
lurking enemies to her domestic, and consequently 
her social and political greatness, which lie too 
often concealed, where the mere party legislator 
would never dream to find them. 

The Author. 



HISTORICAL SKETCH 

OF THE 

VENEREAL DISEASE 



CHAPTER I. 



Historical Sketch of the Venereal Disease, from its earliest 
records — Opinions of the Italians — of Dr. Cullen — of Dr. 
Hall, of Vienna. The disease introduced by Columbus into 

. Europe. Dreadful effects on its first breaking out. The 
Greeks and the Arabians ignorant of the nature of the malady. 
Obscure notions of the Urethral discharge in the Bible. Prac- 
tices of Quacks. Opinions of Mr. Hunter and his followers. 
Practical Experiments of the Army Surgeons in successfully 
removing that disease without mercury. 

This disease has been justly described as one of 
the most surprising phenomena in the history of 
medicine, whether as regards the newness of its 
origin, the malignant inveteracy of its symptoms, or 
the singular mode in which it is produced and pro- 
pagated. Its consequences travel out of the ordina- 
ry track of bodily ailment, covering the frame with 
disgusting evidences of its ruthless nature, and im- 
pregnating the wholesome stream of life with mortal 
poison. It conveys into families the seeds of dis- 
union and unhappiness, undermining domestic har- 
mony, and striking at the very soul of human inter- 
course. 



10 Historical Sketch of 

Many are the names by which this malady has 
been distinguished, in the gradual development of 
medical science. The natives of the Indies where 
it is endemical, call it patursa, by many it is styled 
Lues Venerea ; by Hier Fracastorius* and subse- 
quently by Dr. Cullen, it has been denominated 
Syphilis. And this appears to be the established 
nomenclature. Syphilis is from the Greek wcptog — 
" Filthy," a term somewhat too severe, since it is 
not always the result of impure desires. It arises 
but too often from hereditary taint, or from the im- 
prudence of husbands. All the primitive writers 
concur in naming this disease morbus gallicus, or 
the French disease ; an appellation though employed 
by innumerable foreign and native writers, at differ- 
ent periods, is as unjust in fact, as absurd in point of 
description. 

There have been some learned disputes as to 
whether the venereal disease has arisen in modern 
times, or whether it existed among the Ancients. 
Dr. Cullen seems to doubt whether to consider it a 
species of the Leprosy which anciently prevailed in 
Asia, or an entirely new disease. He says,t " It is 



* Hier Fracastorius, an Italian, very unfairly charges the 
French with being the propagators of this scourge, which was evi- 
dently communicated to that nation by the Italians themselves. 
He has the following lines in his poem on syphilis : — 
44 Qui casus rerum varii, quae semina morbum 
Insuetum, nee longa ulli per secula visum 
Attulerint ; nostra qui tempestate per omnem 
Europeam partimque Asiae, Lebraeque per urbes, 
Scevit in Latium vero per tristia bella 
Gallorum irrupuit ; nomenque a gente recepit." 

t Vide Gullen's First Lines of Physic. Vol. iv. p. 383, 



The Venereal Disease. 1 1 

sufficiently probable, that anciently, in certain parts 
of Asia, where the leprosy prevailed, and in Europe, 
after that disease had been introduced into it, a dis- 
ease of the genitals, resembling that which now 
commonly arises from Syphilis, had frequently ap- 
peared ; but it is equally probable that a new dis- 
ease, and what is at present termed Syphilis, was 
first brought into Europe about the end of the fif- 
teenth century ; and that the distemper now so fre- 
quently occurring, has been entirely derived from 
that which was imported from America at the period 
mentioned." 

The authorities, however, which favor the asser- 
tion of its being a new disease are so many, and of 
such considerable reputation, that their opinions may 
be considered established. Nicholas Leonicenus 
demonstrates, that it could not be the same disorder 
with the Eliphantiasis of Arabia, nor the Lepra of 
Greece, nor the disease called Lichen, which many 
have asserted it to be, because the symptoms of all 
these maladies are entirely different from those of 
syphilis. Fallopius, Massa, Cataneus, Gallus,J. de 
Vigo, Ubricus de Stutten, with many others, concur 
with Leonicenus, affirming that the disease, the ap- 
pearance of which had began to create such divisions 
in the medical schools, in its origin and progress, its 
prognostics and diagnostics, differed from all the 
known maladies of the age. 

Another proof of the new r ness of this disease has 
been founded on the silence of all the satirical poets 
of ancient times, upon the subject which would have 
afforded them such abundant matter for keen raillery 
when waging war against the propensities and vices 
of their days. It is said, indeed, that in the time of 



12 Historical Sketch of 

Tiberius Caesar, anew disease made its appearance, 
of which Pliny and Martial took some notice ; but 
this disorder commenced with eruptions on the chin, 
and during its whole progress was confined to the 
face; nor do these authors mention any other 
symptoms by which the disease can be identified 
with the syphilis of modern times. 

A modern author of high celebrity,* satisfactorily 
demonstrates that syphilis and those complaints 
incidental to the genitals, and treated of by primi- 
tive writers, are not the same, and in the course of 
his work deprecates in no measured terms, attempts 
to cure by the agency of mercurial preparations. And 
during my sojourn in Edinburgh, in the years 1821 
and 1S22, I discovered that the medical faculty of 
that city, who were attached to the public institutions, 
eschewed the use of mercury entirely from their 
practice ; and the fact was well known, that among 
the shops there, the sale of mercurial articles was 
much diminished. I have cautiously, in my own 
practice, watched the progress of the anti-mercurial 
mode of treatment, and in the many thousand cases 
which came under my observation, both in Europe 
and this country, I very seldom had occasion to use 
mercury. 

Columbus, the Genoese, doubtless introduced this 
destructive misery into Europe ; and although the 
fact has been detailed over and over again, a brief 
reference to the circumstances cannot be omitted in 
this place, without creating a palpable hiatus in a 
treatise professing to be historical. 

The commission which gave this bold adventurer 
authority to pursue his thirst for discovery, was. 

* Carmichael. 



The Venereal Disease. 13 

signed on the 17th April, 1492, by Ferdinand and 
Isabella, king and queen of Castile ; and in the fol- 
lowing September, Columbus, with his followers, 
sailed from Spain, and discovered those rich islands, 
which, among other things, were abundantly prolific 
in this virulent disease. The infection is said to 
have been as endemical among the natives of those 
newly discovered countries, as the itch or scurvy 
among ourselves. 

On the return of Columbus to Andalusia, in the 
month of March following, the disease was intro- 
duced into Spain. Some months afterwards, when 
the siege of Naples took place, a reinforcement of 
Spaniards was sent to the garrison, among whom 
were many infected soldiers, who thus introduced 
the curse into that city, where it spread through the 
whole circle of the inhabitants, both male and female, 
with such fearful rapidity, and caused such horrible 
devastations, that the governor and mng ; strates 
turned out all the diseased courtezans, as well as all 
other persons not necessary to the defence of the 
city. The women thus expelled, being for the most 
part beautiful, were eagerly received into the French 
camp. So speedy and terrible was the influence of 
the disease upon the besieging army, the Physicians 
being totally unprepared to arrest its progress, that 
out of a force of sixty thousand men, there scarcely 
remained a sufficient number to carry on the siege.* 



* Sieges appear to foster an inveterate lues — this circumstance 
is often alluded to in modern t : mes. So late as 1688, after the 
razing of the celebra'ed siege of Londonderry, it is stattd. that 
in 105 days, the besieging army had sustained a loss of 9,100 
men in their abort ve auemp s 'o reduce the city. "Although 
most of these fell by the sword, the rest died of fever, dysentery, 

2 



14 Historical Sketch of the 

On the first appearance of this disorder in the 
Italian provinces, the horrid lacerations of the human 
frame, and the attendant excruciating tortures which 
it inflicted upon its victims, repelled, like a plague, 
the approach of pity, and deterred those whom na- 
ture and affection prompted to lend consolation and 
assistance. Even those afflicted with leprosy counted 
themselves fortunate in their escape from this still 
more tremendous evil, and shunned the unhappy vic- 
tims of this disease as they would the bite of a veno- 
mous serpent, or the shaft of unerring destruction. 
The poor were compelled to fly from their habita- 
tions as soon as any symptoms of the disorder mani- 
fested themselves, and to take refuge m abodes ot 
the brute creation, in dens and caverns and trackless 
forests. Physicians, friends, relations, and even 
parents, forsook them ; the ties of nature were rent 
assunder, and all social compact was annihilated— 
so predominant was the fear of infection.' 

The Greek and Arabian authors seem to be totally 
uninformed on the subject.! Prosper BurgMms 
ft nd Johan de Vigo gave most disgusting details of 
the fearful appearances which the disease assumed 
in different subjects, in which they are well corro- 
borated by Joan, Baptist, Montanus, Cataneus, 
Sebastian Aquilan, Petrus Maynardus, #c,; but 
into these details it is unnecessary to enter now 
when the disorder is so well understood. It will 

^~^ZZ of the most inveterate Hnd, and W hich ap- 
peared in a very remarUoU manner on «he bod.es o some .f < ,r 
dead Officers and soldiers"-^ of Deny, by the Rev. John 
Graham, p. 259. 

* Laurentius Phrysius de Morb. Gallic, 

t Nic. Leonicenus. 



Venereal Disease* 



15 



suffice to remark, that in many instances the symp- 
toms closely approximated to those of Elephantiasis ; 
hi others to those of the Leprosy ; that the disorder 
frequently corroded the septum nasi, levelling it with 
the face ; and that it fed upon the lips ; sometimes 
destroyed the uvula ; at others perforated the palate, 
and completely changed the tones and properties of 
the voice. These symptoms experienced multitu-^ 
dinous variations, with change of years, many of the 
old ones becoming greatly qualified, and new ones 
developing themselves, to the great alarm of those 
who groaned under their influence, as well as to the 
extreme perplexity of the medical practitioners, who 
were yet in a state of comparative ignorance with re- 
spect to the real nature of the disease ; and whose en- 
deavours to repress its tremendous ravages were con- 
sequently directed rather with a view to speculative 
results, than by any of those positive rules of practice, 
which the industrious application of subsequent ages 
has rendered successful. It is clear, then, from the 
alarm and astonishment this disease excited amongst 
the learned, as w r ell as from the silence of the ancient 
writers, that no disease like a virulent lues could ex- 
ist. But some have thought that the particular form 
of disease, which consists simply of a discharge, is 
of considerable antiquity. Thus learned men have 
fancied an allusion to this disease in the Psalms of 
David and the Proverbs of Solomon, where young 
men are cautioned in very general, but inconclusive 
terms, against the evil of harlot-hunting. An at- 
tempt was also made by Mr. Becket, in the 357 and 
365th Philosophical Transactions, to show that 
Gonorrhoea was known to Arden and other English 
writers, under the name of Brenning or Burning; all 
those who are affected with this disorder being de- 



16 Historical Sketch of 

scribed as brent or burnt The observations of this 
author are to the effect — that the disease was given to 
a man who became connected with a woman whose 
body had been violently heated by frequent copula- 
tion with different men, so that the next comer was 
brent or burnt ; that is, the urethra suffered an exco- 
riation which caused the urine to be hot and scalding. 
John Arden defines it "a certain ijiward heat and ex- 
coriation of the urethra ;" but as there appears to have 
been no discoloured running, no chancres with callous 
lips, no chordee,no stricture; in short, no other symp- 
tom but the heat and excoriation, and as it has been 
proved in numberless instances since, that heat and 
excoriation may exist in the absence of disease, here 
is no proof to bear out the assertion that the Brenning 
of the old writers can be identified with Gonorrhoea. 
About the middle of the sixteenth century, that is, 
some sixty years after the first appearance of the 
venereal disease in Europe, Alexander Trajan Pe- 
tronius describes its universal prevalence in this 
quarter of the globe, affirming that it infected old 
and young, male and female, the fat and lean, the 
rich and poor; nay, that it did not spare the infant in 
the womb, &c. Benedictus Victorius advanced 
the absurd position, that it might be communicated 
to a sound person (without any sexual interference) 
from the state of the heavens, the evil aspect of the 
planets, or their unlucky conjunction ; probably, 
however, this strange assertion was hazarded with a 
view to screen the characters of persons affected 
with this disease, among whom were eminent car- 
dinals, right reverend bishops, and the most pious 
monks and nuns, who were as frequently under its 
influence as meaner and more worldly personages. 
This conviction, too, is confirmed by the language of 



The Venereal Disease. 17 

Alexander Petronius, who insinuates that he knew 
not 'the cause of the disorder, and that if he did 
know, lie dared- not say it. 

In former days, as at present, quacks and impostors 
existed, to whom, the afflicted multitude greedily re- 
sorted. These depredators upon human life had their 
specifics > which speedily removed the external symp- 
toms, and the patient believed himself happy to have 
so purchased his escape. But, alas ! the suppressed 
disorder, uneradieated by their superficial remedies, 
invariably burst forth with renewed malignity, entail- 
ing upon the credulous sufferer redoubled agonies, 
which were even heightened by the stings of self- 
reproach. 

Impostors of a similar kind still exist — pretending 
to cure without mercury — they employ it neverthe- 
less ; and the patient to whom this potent remedy is 
administered, without confinement or due caution, 
often becomes seriously disordered or his constitution 
undermined. I have clearly traced the development 
of fatal consumption to the intemperate use of mer- 
cury, administered to young gentlemen of fortune 
by a quack. 

The reader is probably not ignorant, that some 
years ago, experiments, on a large scale, as to the 
removal of syphilis without mercury, were made by- 
some of the surgeons of the English army. It 
is to these experiments, very properly conceived and 
very carefully executed, that we owe the introduc- 
tion of the non-mercurial plan. I feel it incumbent 
on myself to notice this circumstance, because it 
certainly very justly appeared the results were 
favourable. And they conclusively point out, that 
even among soldiers subjected to daily fatigue and 

2* 



18 Historical Sketch of fyc. 

exertion, that the disease can be combatted without 
mercury. And I feel myself perfectly justified in 
my assertions from practical experience. 

The day of doubt and delusion has passed away ; 
all the mists of error which originally surrounded 
this disorder have been long since dispelled ; — the 
rays of science has dissipated the mystery which 
involved it. Yet, increased as the knowledge of the 
nature of this malady is, and improved as is the mode 
of treatment, it is by no means to be assumed that 
the disease has become of trifling influence, or that 
it carries no menace of consequence to the human 
frame ; for, with all its modifications, it is still a dis- 
order of that subtle and 'malignant dipositon, which 
requires to be watched at its commencement and in 
its progress with sedulous attention, and to be 
arrested with all the force of medicine, without put- 
ting in peril the integrity of the constitution itself. 

This much may suffice to instruct the reader in 
the history of the Venereal disease, and to acquaint 
him with the opinions of learned writers. I shall 
presently enter into details of its various forms, un- 
der different chapters, with a view to render the 
whole subject clear and intelligible to every degree 
of human capacity. 



CHAPTER II. 



Of ihe Symptoms and Treatment of Gonorrhoea, (or Clap,) 
Gleet, Stricture, Irrilabte Bladder, Swelled Testicles, <$-c. 



Venereal intercourse is occasionally impure ; and 
there are animal poisons generated and communi- 
cated by this intercourse, of a peculiarly malignant 
character. One is the poison of Gonorrhoea, (the 
disease vulgarly termed Clap) which falling on the 
mucous membrane of the urethra, produces from 
that surface, a discharge of infectious matter ; the 
other, or the poison of syphilis, being applied to the 
surface of the skin, or, (as far as is known at pre- 
sent,) to any surface, produces local inflammation and 
ulceration ; forming a sore which is called a Chancre. 
The discharge from this, being received into the 
absorbent glands, occasions swellings, which have 
been named Bubo, and from the transmission of the 
poison into the circulation, there arise respectively, 
inflammation and ulceration in the throat, on the skin, 
in the membranes, investing the bones, and even in , 
those solid bodies themselves. 

If a healthy individual have sexual intercourse 
with another, labouring under chronic mucous dis- 
charge as the result of gonorrhoeal inflammation, in- 
fection though not absolutely certain^is most likely to 



20 Of the Symptoms and Treatment 

arise, but no certain rule can be laid down with re- 
gard to the time that a clap will take before it makes 
its appearance, after infection has been conveyed. 
In some instances, three or four days elapse, in 
others, there will not be the least appearance of 
irritation, before the expiration of ten or even four- 
teen days, and Sir Astley Cooper, with other writers, 
record as many weeks. Most commonly, however, 
the disease is perceptible in the space of from six 
to twelve days. In the males it commences with a 
sense of uneasiness, or tingling about the extremity 
of the penis ; often a thrilling sensation, not of an 
unpleasant character, and nearly allied to the vene- 
real oestrum ; presently this is exchanged for itching 
and soreness, and then a drop of fluid escaping 
without effort, the attention is called to the part ; 
and it is found, the lips of the urethra are swollen 
and inflamed ; a whitish, glutinous, and nearly trans- 
parent fluid, exuding from its orifice. At first, the 
discharge from the passage is mucous ; but, after- 
wards, it assumes a decidedly purulent appearance, 
that is, resembling " matter." This becomes yellow, 
or, if the inflammatory symptoms run high, green, 
and it is often intermixed and streaked with blood. 
I say resembling matter, for the fact is, that even in 
these aggravated cases, the discharge contains little 
beyond the altered mucous secretion of the part. 
The time this augmented diseased secretion will 
continue to discharge is quite indefinite. Some peo- 
ple assert it will wear itself out ; one thing is cer- 
tain, it will sooner wear out the sufferer ; besides, 
the doctrine is dangerous, inasmuch as it overlooks 
the permanent consequences of a disease supposed 
to pass away. Thickening of the mucous membrane, 



Of Gonorrhoea, fyc. 21 

of the urinary canal is one of the consequences of 
long protracted and neglected clap, and this state of 
parts lays the foundation, if not identical with stric- 
ture. Or the discharge may cease to present its 
usual characters and leave a surface prone to the 
secretion of a thin, ichorous fluid, termed Gleet. 
It is obvious then, that no folly can be greater than 
that of suffering the disease to end as many others are 
apt to do, by terminating in another ; and that other, 
often of a permanently incurable character. Besides 
these effects on the urethra, gonorrhoea takes a course 
internally. It does not confine itself to the lips of 
the urethra, but often produces an erysipelatous in- 
flammation and swelling of the glands and fore-skin ; 
occasioning effusion, and the formation of the diseases 
termed Phymosis and Paraphymosis, in the former 
of which, the fore-skin cannot be drawn back to 
cover the end of the penis ; in the latter, the pre- 
puce forming a tight ring at the back of the gland, 
cannot again be brought forward ; the pain and stran- 
gulation in this state of the parts are excessive, and 
demand prompt surgical interference. The glands of 
the groin often become affected from sympathy. We 
say from sympathy, in contradistinction to that swol- 
len state of the inguinal glands, resulting from the 
transmission of syphilitic matter, as occurs in the 
aggravated forms of venereal disease. In the first 
instance the glands swell, but not the same range of 
glands as are liable to be affected with syphilitic 
bubo ; and there is also this distinction, that while 
in the latter case they almost invariably burst, the 
gland that is sympathetically inflamed during the 
progress of gonorrhoea, never or very seldom inflames 
to suppuration. Where this effect takes place from 
gonorrhoea, several glands of the groin are apt to be 



22 Of the Symptoms and Treatment 

affected in succession ; whereas, in the absorption 
of the poison of syphilis, a single gland only is en-, 
larged on each side. In the course of the disease, 
swelling and suppuration often takes place in. the 
mouths of those lacunce, which, like dilated pouches, 
are situated chiefly near the canal. Matter becomes 
accumulated there, and this place appears to con- 
stitute the last entrenchment of the diseased action. 
Irritation and inflammation occur also in the spongy 
bodies, forming the bulk of the penis, thus constitut- 
ing that painful affection termed Chordee, in which 
the penis becomes partially erect, and feels as if 
curved and bound down, so as to prevent its com- 
plete extension. This, of course, is a temporary, 
though intensely agonizing predicament, and gene- 
rally takes place in the night, accompanied with 
great pain, preventing the patient from sleeping. 
When the parts are not occupied with much inflam- 
mation, few or none of the last symptoms will ap- 
pear, and only a discharge of a specific character, 
with a slight heat or scalding in making water, will 
prevail. The sensation of scalding varies much in 
intensity in different individuals, and frequently 
abates or passes off altogether where the discharge 
has become established. Generally, from the adja- 
cent parts sympathising with those already affected, 
the patient feels a sensation of uneasiness, and 
dragging down about the thighs and fundament. 
One of the most painful consequences arising in the 
course of gonorhcea, is the occurrence of Swelled 
Testicle. From the statements afforded in the 
anatomical section of this woik, it will be seen there 
is a true continuity of mucous surface from the 
urethra along the cord to the testicles, and it is along 



Of Gonorrhoea, <£c. 23 

this surface that gonorrhoeal inflammation occasion- 
ally creeps, giving rise to horribly painful enlarge- 
ment of one or both of these organs. The testicle 
is enveloped in a dense fibrous capsule, which does 
not readily yield to distension ; hence, the pain when 
enlargement is produced by inflammatory action. In 
consequence of this, there will be excruciating agony 
extending into the small of the back, heat, restless- 
ness, and symptomatic fever ; a furred tongue, thirst, 
quick pulse, and great depression of the vital ener- 
gies. It not unfrequently happens that the swollen 
testicle suppurates and bursts ; and whether this 
occur or no, it is certain that on the subsidence of 
disease, its functions as a secretory gland in the 
production and elimination of the seminal fluid, are 
by no means enhanced by all this mischief. But of 
all the consequences of gonorrhoea which tell most 
fatally upon the comfort of married life, and interfere 
most decidedly with the procreative energies, the 
formation of stricture is most to be dreaded. Spas- 
modic stricture, occurs during the progress of (lop, 
and is produced by temporary spasms of the muscles 
surrounding the membranous portion of the urinary 
canal. Inflammatory stricture, generally succeeds 
acute gonorrhoea, and consists in the effusion of ad- 
hesive matter around the canal ; while 'permanent 
stricture is the result of the' thickening of the ure- 
thra, and consequent narrowing of the canal from a 
slow inflammatory process. There are many cases 
' of permanent stricture besides gonorrhoeal inflamma- 
tion, and while speaking of this, it will be well to 
enumerate them. No one is more frequent than 
excessive prolongation in venereal intercourse. Its 
constant effect, is the exhaustion of the energy of the 



24 Of the Symptoms and Treatment of 

muscular fibres ; thus are they thrown into irregular 
action, and permanent contraction of some part of the 
passage is thereby induced. Indeed so strong is this 
effect, that symptoms of spasmodic stricture have 
been known to arise in some patients after every 
repetition of venereal intercourse, especially if due 
time for repose have not been afforded for the secre- 
tory organs; and though these symptoms at first 
were found on examination, not to be the effect of 
permanent stricture, yet this was generally produced 
in the end, and proved most troublesome in its re- 
moval. Masturbation, in this way, produces the 
same or worse effects than severe venereal effort. 
Spasmodic stricture, then, or that too violent excite- 
ment of the muscles around the neck of the bladder, 
whether arising from self -pollution, venereal excesses, 
or inflammation of mismanaged or neglected clap, 
may, and often does terminate in permanent con- 
striction of the urinary canal. At the commence- 
ment of the formation of permanent stricture, the 
surgeon is made acquainted with the real nature of 
the complaint by the following indications : — The 
first is the retention of a few drops of urine in the 
urethra, after the whole appears to be discharged. 
The patient, although the stream of urine may be 
somewhat diminished, feels no particular uneasiness^ 
until he perceives some difficulty in its expulsion. 
The effort is greater than usual, and a straining con- 
tinues, even after the bladder is emptied. Occasional 
irregularities from cold, indulgence in drink, or 
change of weather, and even very trifling causes are 
sufficient to cause the urine to pass only hydrops, or 
for a time to be totally obstructed. The bladder, in 
the progress of this disease becomes irritable ; this is 



Of Gonorrhoea, fyc. 25 

evinced by the person not being able to sleep so long 
as usual, without rising to effect the urinary dis- 
charge. A man in health will sleep for seven, eight, 
or nine hours, without being obliged to empty his 
bladder ; but if he labour under stricture, he cannot 
continue for a longer period than four or five hours, 
and frequently much less than this. A patient of 
mine, who occasionally (but not often) gets tipsy 
over night, invariably sends for my aid to pass the 
catheter next morning ; the man is the subject of 
stricture, and frequently rises in the night to evacuate 
his bladder ; when under the influence of intoxicat- 
ing fluid's, he sleeps insensible to the stimulus of an 
irritable yet distending bladder, and the result on 
waking is complete powerlessness to effect its 
ordinary discharge. The next circumstance observ- 
able in the progress of permanent stricture, is the 
forked division of the urinary stream, the reason of 
which is deducible from the uneven, irregular, and 
swollen, as well as contracted state of the urethra. 
The urine cannot be ejected to the usual and na- 
tural distance, although the patient be sensible of the 
bladder making more than usual exertions. Some- 
times it assumes a spiral or twisted direction. 
Even the thread-like stream, conspicuous in the 
advanced stage of stricture often gives place to a 
discharge bv mere drops, attended by the strongest 
efforts and the most excruciating pain. The coats 
of the bladder become enormously thickened, there 
is dilation behind the place where the stricture 
occurs; (which is commonly the membranous por- 
tion of the urethra anterior to the prostate gland :) 
the ureters, or canals, leading from the kidnevs to 
the bladder become distended and dilated, and the 

3 



H6 Symptoms and Treatment 

kidneys themselves, the secretory organs of the 
urine become diseased. Many of these appearances, 
if not all, are attributable to the existence of a phy- 
sical impediment, a narrowing, or stricture, of a 
portion of the urinary canal, — and if viewed in con- 
nection with the obligation of marriage, are most 
grave in their consequences. 

Gleet is one of the sequelae of Clap, and is often 
exceedingly difficult of removal, sometimes continu- 
ing for years. The discharge becomes chronic, its 
character is altered ; and from being purulent, it is 
now semi-transparent. Its persistence mostly de- 
pends on the co-existence of stricture in some por- 
tion of the canal. The term " Gonorhcea" is de- 
rivable from the Greek, and signifies, literally, a flow 
of seed ; the earlier writers mistaking the mucous 
discharge occuring in clap, for the all-important 
seminal fluid. " Blennorhagia," a flow of mucous, 
is the more correct classical nominclature, synony- 
mous with the " claude-pisse" hot urine, of the 
French, cr " clap," of the vernacular English. 
Timoeus relates that a young law T student, the victim 
of self-pollution, was " seized w 7 ith a gonorrhoea, ac- 
companied with a weakness of the whole body." 
He observes, " I looked upon the gonorrhoea as a 
sequel of the relaxation of the seminal vessels," and 
truly his reasoning was correct ; but as to the dis- 
charge, termed by him, " Gonorrhoea," it was neither 
the involuntary escape of semen, nor the infectious 
matter, correctly indicating the existence of clap ; 
but a gleety discharge from the prostate, vesicular 
seminales and urethral surface, certainly very analo- 
gous in character, to the chronic effusion superven- 
ing on stricture from neglected clap. 



Of Gonorrhoea, fyc. 2? 

There is an exceeding distressing affection fre- 
quently resulting from gonorrhoea, and thereby fitly 
to be introduced in this place, named by surgeons — 
" Irritable bladder." I say frequently arising in this 
way, but it may also proceed from certain solitary 
practices ; in fact, is closely identified with all the 
habits of sensualism. The patient is annoyed by a 
frequent desire to void his urine, and this symptom 
becomes ultimately so urgent, that the inclination to 
empty the bladder occurs as often as every ten or fif- 
teen minutes. The pain experienced is in exact 
ratio with the distention of the bladder, and some- 
times the urine is discharged mixed with blood. 
Irritable bladder is a dreadful disorder, the patient's 
life is a burden to him : he is obliged to keep from 
society, and linger away his hours in solitude. The 
late Sir Astley Cooper relates the case of a young 
gentleman, who, being in company with a party of 
ladies, was about to leave them for the purpose of 
making water, having at the moment a strong desire ; 
in the greatest agony he rode with them some miles; 
when endeavouring at the end of his journey to 
evacuate his bladder, to his utter astonishment he 
could not pass a drop ; a surgeon was sent for, who 
took away the urine by means of a catheter, but from 
suppuration supervening upon an irritable bladder, 
he shortly died from exhaustion. Next to those 
cases which have occurred in connection with 
gonorrhoeal inflammation, the most frequent instan- 
ces of this irritable condition of the organ occur, as 
the result of excessive venereal indulgence in ad- 
vanced life, or self-pollution in youth. 

In reference to the treatment of gonorrhoeal affec- 
tions little need be added. The most important 



28 Symptoms and Treatment 

remark I have to offer, relates to the necessity of the 
avoidance of its mismanagement. The deplorable 
results of this form of venereal disease just recited, 
are easily averted by common care and prudence ; 
but from negligence, or in the hands of unskilful 
surgeons, the most calamitous consequences not un- 
frequently arise. Among the most common of those 
cases which precipitate these secondary diseases. 
may be enumerated the use, or rather the abuse of 
Mercury, (which by unanimous consent has long 
been banished from the scientific treatment of 
gonorrhoea,) the employment of stimulant resins, as 
Turpentine, Cubebs, or the Balsam of Copaiba, before 
the subsidence of the inflammatory or acute stage : 
but principally the mismanagement of astringent or 
irritating Injections. These, however useful and 
necessary in the chronic stage of the complaint, 
undoubtedly tend, by destroying the discharge, to fix 
the specific diseased action upon the testicles, pro- 
ducing inflammation and enlargment, nay, frequently 
disorganization there ; consequences far more to be 
dreaded than the original mischief. For it must 
carefully be noted, that to arrest the flow of morbid 
mucous is not to cure the disease. Inflammation 
of a specific kind, in this instance relieves itself, or 
terminates in a discharge of a peculiar secretion 
from the inflamed surface ; and it is only by chang- 
ing or destroying that diseased action of the vessels 
which produces the discharge, that a cure can ration- 
ally be expected to be effected. Gonorrhoea attains 
its crisis more uninterruptedly in a full than in a 
languid habit ; but extremes of both are sources of 
aggravation, the first as regards intensity, the second 
as regards time. 



Of Gonorrhcea, <£c. 29 

The science of surgery affords no means by which 
a confirmed clap can be suddenly arrested in its 
career, and the attempt, if made, is frequently pro- 
ductive of evil results. The treatment will neces- 
sarily be modified by the date, the intensity of the 
disease, and the constitutional peculiarities of the 
subject ; and hence, though most of the remedies be 
well known, yet, in their application, they require 
that discrimination, which renders it necessarily un- 
wise and unsafe, that a man should venture to treat 
his own case ; and the records of our practice attest 
much serious mischief that has arisen in this way. 
For a period of at least one week, the treatment 
should be strictly palliative ; the diet should be mo- 
derately reduced, the bowels relaxed, (but not vio- 
lently irritated by drastic purgatives,) the local inflam- 
mation mitigated by frequent fomentation and rest. 
The smarting which occurs in evacuating the blad- 
der arises not from any change in the chemical con- 
stituents of the urine, but from the circumstances 
of its having to pass over an inflamed and highly 
sensitive surface ; so when the eye is inflamed, 
light, which constitutes its natural stimulus, becomes 
intolerable. This smarting may be much alleviated 
by taking about thirty drops of the solution of potass 
three times a day, with sixty drops of the tincture of 
the herb Fendoni, (which neutralizes the acid the urine 
naturally contains,) combined with a few drops of 
tincture of Opium, besides which mucilaginous and 
diluent drinks certainly render the urine less stimu- 
lating. The activity of the disease being exhausted, 
and the acute stage of inflammatory excitement sub- 
siding, under judicious management, the improve- 
ment will be indicated by a diminution of pain in* 

3* 



30 . Symptoms and Treatment 

making water, and in the quantity of the discharge, 
which becomes paler in colour and more watery in 
consistence. 

In order to effect these salutary changes, there is 
no necessity for the administration of mercury, as 
was once the practice. Formerly it was thought, 
that there is a set of constitutional symptoms super- 
vening upon the local disease, (in the same way as 
venereal sore throat follows neglected syphilitic chan- 
cres ;) that gonorrhoea constituted only a variety of 
syphilitic disease, and that mercury was absolutely 
necessary for its cure in every form. Modern science 
has, however, dispelled this illusion ; there are some 
accidental complications, but no distinctly regular 
secondary symptoms, resulting from Gonorrhoea. 
The first stage then being passed, the treatment 
should undergo a corresponding change, otherwise 
the disease will pass into Gleet, and become tediously 
protracted ; should Chordee, of which we have spo- 
ken, interrupt the healthy progress of the case, in 
all probability the cure will be more or less delayed, 
inasmuch as this painful symptom indicates a hitherto 
inflammation of the urinary canal, extending to the 
spongy tissue forming the body of the penis. Chor~ 
dee is a common symptom of Clap, and the general 
mode of treating it is a combination of Calomel and 
Opium, the abstraction of blood from the arm, and 
the warm bath, &c. ; but it will invariably yield to 
an ointment composed of the following ingredients, 
applied along the dorsum of the penis — 

$ Ungt. Hyd. Fort, - - I ss. 
Pulv. Opii. Grana, - x gs. 
Pulv. Camph. - - - 3 ss. 



Of Gleet, $c. 21 



GLEET. 

The general treatment of Gleet, consists in the 
administration of large and still larger doses of inter- 
nal stimuli, of which those in most frequent use are 
Turpentine, the resinous Balsams of Chio, or 
Copaiba, and Cubeb Pepper, and of local injections 
of Alum, the Sulphates of Zinc, or Copper, and 
Nitrate of Silver ; but the Balm of Zura, taken in- 
ternally, gives more strength and vigour to those 
parts than any other medicine hitherto discovered; 
and even when the procreative energies become 
torpid or paralized in either sex, it restores the natu- 
ral functions of those parts, and relieves them of any 
discharge that may exist. This medicine gives tone 
to the weakened vessels, and it changes the diseased 
habits of the organs, the discharge from the penis, 
and vagina entirely subsides by its use. That very 
distressing disease peculiar to Females, termed 
Fluor Albas, or Whites, will yield to its benign in- 
fluence. Patients who have been labouring for 
years under this malady have, in less than twelve 
days, after taking the Balm of Zura, received the 
most effectual relief. Doctor'N. Barbantine, whose 
name and character bear with him the admiration of 
mankind, and whose authority is not to be contro- 
verted, informs us that he used this medicine with 
the most astonishing success, in generative debility, 
seminal iceakness, impotency, nocturnal emissions, 
and deficiency of the natural strength. 

The grand secret exists- in the judicious mode of 



32 Treatment of 

its application, and giving it in such doses as will 
agree with the constitution of the patient. Many- 
attempts have been made since its first introduction 
into this city, to counterfeit this invaluable prepara- 
tion, but there is only one Druggist in this country 
who imports the genuine article. Gonorrhoea, if 
neglected or improperly treated, becomes chronic 
gleet, and in this state is infectious equally with the 
acute disorder ; if, however, the discharge be kept 
up solely from the existence of stricture, it is not 
necessarily communicable. Under any circum- 
stance, so long as there is the least appearance of 
discharge, a matrimonial union is unadvisable, 
and correct surgical advice and treatment is impera- 
tively necessary. 



STRICTURE. 



As to the treatment of Stricture, there are three 
indications in its cure ; one to produce the requisite 
physical dilation of the constricted canal ; another 
method is, the attempt to produce absorption of the 
thickened organized lymph surrounding the urethras ; 
and a third is a mechanical destruction of the stric- 
ture. Elastic or solid instruments, cautiously in- 
troduced, will often effect the original dilations ; 
medicine will sometimes succeed in promoting the 
cure by absorption, and destructive caustic will form 
a new passage through the thickened parts, when 
less powerful agencies have failed. 

It is certain that these means are strictly surgical, 
and, perhaps, in the whole round of operative 



Stricture. 33 

science, there is nothing demanding a more minute 
acquaintance with the unseen anatomy of ihe parts, 
than the treatment of stricture ; none in which blun- 
dering rashness or ignorance may effect more 
deplorable mischief. The bougie or catheter may 
be forced into the bulb of the urethra, or tear its way 
into the Substance of the prostate gland ; and death 
may ensue from unrelieved distention of the bladder, 
and the irritation supervening upon the injury. The 
use of caustic has been much abused, and indeed 
ought never to be employed, except in those extreme 
cases which surgical discrimination alone can detect 
and justify. 

All the diseases of this unhappy class are of a 
complicated and varied nature ; they embrace, in 
their consequences, so many painful diseases, that I 
never consider them, however slight in appearance, 
as mere local effects, but always dread their approach 
to a constitutional character ; for, by a deplorable 
fatality, to which limit is unknown, the most trivial 
cases of these diseases become the fruitful mine of 
a thousand discordant feelings and symptoms, that 
harrass their devoted victim for an indefinite period ; 
therefore I strongly recommend, in all cases, a min- 
ute investigation, in order that the remedies may be 
effective on their onset ; the choice of which reme- 
dies must be governed by the symptoms, constitution 
and habits of the patient, bearing in mind that in 
diseases of this kind, large evacuations of any cha- 
racter are to be carefully guarded against ; for, in 
all cases, they have done injury, by producing either 
irritability of the stomach or the bowels, and thus 
rendering the system unequal to the retention of the 
necessary remedies. Let not non-medical readers 



34 Treatment of Stricture. 

imagine, that the foregoing sketch of gonorrhoeal 
disease £nd its consequences, is intended to place 
the method of cure within their own grasp ; let such 
a one apply for medical aid on the first outbreak of 
suspicious symptoms ; by so doing he will save him- 
self a world of anxiety, arising from the fear of 
going wrong in the adoption of the curative plan of 
treatment. In fact all that relates to the manage- 
ment of the consequences of gonorrhoeal inflamma- 
tion, as for instance, gleet, stricture, swelled testicle, 
and other obscure, yet painful, affections of the 
urinary organs is strictly surgical ; the definition of 
those principles could little avail the general reader, 
whose interest is best consulted by referring him 
directly and at once, not to books, which could only 
confuse a mind ignorant of anatomical matters, but 
to that practitioner who has made sexual diseases 
his exclusive study. 



CHAPTER III. 



Of the Symptoms and Treatment of the Venereal Disease in its 
Local and Constitutional Forms, and the use and abuse of 
i Mercury. 



I have already observed, that animal poisons differ, 
not merely in their intensity, but in their nature ; 
that some confine their agency to the surface where 
the contaminating virus is originally applied, pro- 
ducing rather a peculiarity of disordered action than 
diseased change of structure ; the constitution sym- 
pathizing little and distant parts remaining unaffect- 
ed, such is the poison of clap ; but the virus of 
syphilis or pox produces local destruction of the 
surface, and from absorption, the whole mass of 
circulating blood becomes diseased. After an inde- 
finite period, and even after the local sores have 
healed, the throat, the nose, the skin, the bones, be- 
come often successfully implicated ; and if neglected 
or maltreated, death may, and not unfrequently does 
arise from its invasion. The local sores affecting 
the surface of the external genitals from impure inter- 
course, are denominated chancres, sometimes single, 
occasionally more than two or even three are present. 
The time at which the effect of the poison pro- 
ducing these ulcerations makes its presence evident 



36 Symptoms and Treatment of 

is very uncertain ; generally speaking, the chancre 
makes its appearance three or four days after impure 
sexual contact ; from five to twenty days forming 
the average period. An inflamed spot is first per- 
ceptible, presently a minute pimple bursts and dis- 
plays a rapidly enlarging ulcerated surface. In the 
centre of the sore an excavation is sometimes ob- 
servable, of considerable magnitude, extending 
beneath the skin, exquisitely sensitive and painful, 
erysipelatous redness surrounding the ulcer, and the 
skin assuming an unusual firmness. The edges of 
that sore are irregular, its form often oval, but hard 
and ragged, its surface yellow, and this feeling of 
solidity easily perceptible, if the part be grasped 
between two fingers. In fact the thickened base is 
a distinguishing peculiarity of syphilitic sores. If 
a chancre has not penetrated the skin, it heals under 
the application of proper topical and internal treat- 
ment, but if once the skin be perforated bv destruc- 
tive ulceration — if the cellullar tissue underneath 
partake of the diseased action, it becomes irritable 
sloughs, or mortifies, and is attended with danger. 
When a syphilitic sore is confined to the surface of 
the skin, its progress is slow, and it is comparatively 
easy of cure ; if, on the contrary, it burrows deeply 
into the integuments, the sloughing may be expected 
to be extensive, and the immediate constitutional and 
febrile symptoms will run high. Syphilitic sores or 
chancres vary exceedingly in character; this variety 
is not only produced by the previous mode of living, 
and the constitution of the patient, but is undoubted- 
ly ascribable to diversities in the nature of the poison. 
If two persons differing in irritability absorb the 
same virus, the more irritable subject of the two 



The Venereal Disease, 37 

will present a sore surrounded by violent inflamma- 
tion, so that a person labouring under simple sores 
to day, if he indulge to-morrow in any act of intem- 
perance or debauchery, will change by that impru- 
dence the aspect and tendency of the ulcer. In 
some unfortunate instances we have clap co-existent 
with chancre; however, the matter of gonorrhoea 
will not produce chancre, nor will the secretion from 
a chancre originate clap ; proving, not the identity, 
but the diversity and the possible absorption of two 
poisons. Besides these, there are sores (believed 
to be followed by constitutional and secondary 
symptoms) produced by the contact of men whose 
constitutional condition is peculiar with women, 
whose genital organs secrete a simply irritating fluid, 
as the whites, the diseased menstrual secretion, or 
indeed any impure secretion of a puriform character. 

It happens, not unfrequently, that males become 
infected with troublesome and suspicious sores from 
intercourse with women, whose purity is undoubted ; 
nay, even from contact with their own wives at cer- 
tain peiiods. These views are fast gaining upon 
the confidence of the profession, and the result is 
most salutary, inasmuch as it was formerly the prac- 
tice to style every sore, without exception, syphilitic, 
to apply mercury indiscrimately ; and (to say nothing 
of the injurious moral imputation) mercurial reme- 
dies unnecessarily and injudiciously applied, have 
frequently created a diseased condition, mistaken for 
the undoubted effects of the syphilitic virus itself. 

Healthy women, in whom not a vestige of actual 
disease could be traced, upon examination, and so 
pronounced, have, undoubtedly, in consequence of 
some diseased peculiarity, totally unconnected with 

4 



88 Symptoms and Treatment of 

unchaste intercourse, communicated, by after con- 
tact with their husbands or lovers, actual sores, 
closely resembling the previously recognised forms 
of venereal disease. These ulcers, which are per- 
fectly simple in character, may be reasonably referred 
to the presence of matter irritating the surface ap- 
plied, and co-operating with a constitution prone to 
the promotion of that peculiar form oj local mischief. 

Many authors favour the opinion that appears to 
be warranted by facts, that there exists, not one 
poison of a specific venereal kind, but many. If 
the poisons that respectively produce clap and chan- 
chre, be evidently distinct, forming two, who shall 
say that the limitation proceeds no farther ? that each 
of these poisons is not attended by its own distinct 
results, not only as regards the character of the sore, 
but also of the secondary and constitutional symp- 
toms ? Those, on the contrary, who hold the opinion, 
that the whole train of venereal symptoms, both pri- 
mary and secondary, are the product of the same 
poison, refer the diversities in the appearance of the 
sore to the modifying influence of health, tempera- 
ment, and especially to the habits of the patient. 

It is exceedingly probable, that, if these animal 
poisons producing syphilitic sores, be not all identi- 
cally the same, at least they are not very unlike, and 
may be considered as the different genera of one 
species, owing their differences chiefly to the pecu- 
liarity of the constitution in which they are engen- 
dered ; for it is certain, that the poison of one sore 
in the female, will not invariably give rise to a series 
of corresponding sores, in each of those individuals 
of our own sex with whom she may have been placed 
in contact. 



The Venereal Disease, fyc. 39 

I have sufficiently pointed out in the historical 
portion of this work, that the sexual diseases which 
devastated Europe, about the period of the return of 
Columbus from the discovery of America, are so 
altered or modified, as to bear no relation to the hor- 
rible, yet doubtlessly faithful relations of the Histo- 
rians of that period. ' 

It w T as the opinion of Hunter, that gonorrhoea and 
chancre arose from the same specific virus, and his 
practice was conformable and followed out (until the 
days of Cline, Cooper, and Abernethy) by the ad- 
ministration of mercury, equally for the cure of both 
diseases; but Hunter's authority is fast declining. 
The late Sir Astley Cooper, in reference to this dis- 
tinction, was accustomed to observe, " Let me say 
no greater folly, nor indeed cruelty, can be commit- 
ted than that of giving Mercury to patients labour- 
ing under gonorrhoea. I abstain from entering the 
venereal wards of the other hospital, because patients 
under gonorrhoea are compelled to undergo so infa- 
mous a system of treatment." Hunter spoke per- 
haps truly of a particular species of sore, but he 
generalized too much, identifying the " Hunterian 
Chancre" with every other species of ulcer resulting 
from venereal intercourse ; hence his conclusions 
are much modified in modern practice. He taught 
us to believe, that it is the invariable of all truly 
venereal sores to become progressively worse, and 
never undergo any amendment unless mercury, the 
specific remedy, be administered. 

Thus chancres on the penis, and secondary sore 
throat, are described as constantly growing worse 
without the aid of mercury. Now the fact is, there 
are many sores which become irritable and disposed 



40 Symptoms and Treatment of 

to slough under the mercurial treatment ; and igno- 
rant surgeons mistaking the true nature of the case, 
have concluded that a more complete and speedy- 
saturation of the system alone, could cure the mis- 
chief their own remedies were actually producing. 
If a sore were found to heal, as many will, without 
mercury, then, according to the Hunterian doctrines 
of the English school, it was declared not to have 
been venereal; certainly there is nothing in a name, 
whether ulceration or destruction of parts be styled 
venereal, syphilitic, or simple, if originating in 
sexual contact. Men do not, or ought not, prescribe 
for names, but for an actually existing condition. In 
doubtful cases I am advised to defer the employ- 
ment of mercury, for the purpose of judging of the 
nature of the disease by the foregoing criterion ; but 
now it is well known, that many rapidly spreading, 
dangerous sores, arising from sexual intercourse, are 
not only curable without the administration of a 
grain of Mercury, but are absolutely rendered 
malignant by its ignorant and injudicious employ- 
ment. 

As the non-mercurial treatment of primary sores 
gained ground, " secondary symptoms, "(or more cor- 
rectly speaking, what were formerly mistaken as 
such,) diminished at the same rate. Many of these 
miscalled " secondary symptoms," have only lately 
been found out in many cases to be the primary 
symptoms of bad practice. Yes, the rotten skulls 
which are to be found in anatomical museums, with 
all the other beautiful specimens of diseased bones, 
which in our younger days were so abundant in 
hospitals, in the great majority of cases ivere the 
production of long and harrassing courses of Mer- 



The Venereal Disease, fyc. 41 

eury. When the mercurial treatment was most in 
vogue, secondary symptoms were most numerous, 
but the medical men of that day, the blind devotees 
of the doctrines of Hunter, supposed them to be the 
result of too little mercury having been employed in 
the primary treatment. These practitioners resem- 
bled the celebrated Sangrada, who, when his patients 
died, after he had drawn almost every drop of blood 
from their bodies, and drenched them with warm 
water, while they were able to swallow it, declared 
"their deaths could not have happened if they had 
been sufficiently bled or had taken warm water 
enough." I co-inside entirely in the spirit of the 
above passage from the published lectures of Dr. 
Dickson, formerly a medical officer on the British 
Staff, whose fearful mental independence in the ex- 
posure of popular and deeply rooted medical falla- 
cies, is deserving of the highest commendation. 

The rash, indiscriminate and unqualified abuse of 
mercury, has been productive of infinite mis- 
chief, not only in the hands of professedly edu- 
cated surgeons and ignorant quacks, but from them 
the practice has descended to patients, who have 
thought to cure themselves ; under the notion of its 
being an antidote, the untutored think they have only 
to saturate the system, or to persevere in the use of 
some one of the advertised nostrums, such as Hun- 
ters Red Drop, and the other mercurial dollar bottles 
and pills, though professedly vegetable and harm, 
less,* and so thousands are mercurialized out of ex- 

* We have a great many instances of .he depredations com- 
mitted on human life in this city, by medicine administered by 
Quacks. Fourteen of these preparations were recently analysed 
here. All of them contained sublimate, six contained arsenic,, 
camphor and mercury / three contained balsam copaiba, «olutioit 

4* 



42 Symptoms and Treatment of 

istence, or their constitution so broken, and the func- 
tions of the living system so impaired as to render 
the residue of life miserable. It must be recollect- 
ed, that at best, the peculiar condition which mercury 
produces upon the system, is in itself a diseased 
unnatural predicament. For with respect to the 
principle on which mercury acts, w T e suppose it 
cures syphilis, not by any chemical operation, but 
by exciting in the constitution and parts affected, a 
particular action, to all intents and purposes the 
effects of a poison, yet not in dose to extinguish 
life ; and that upon the principle or law of living 
organization, that no two widely differing morbific 
agencies can exist together, the syphilitic action is 
obliterated and put out. No consideration, short of 
the absolute impossibility of averting its use, should 
reconcile us to the evil. There certainly are cases 
where a choice of evils present themselves, where 
mercury is apparently indispensable, but the selec- 
tion of these cases, and the judicious administration 
of the remedy, both as respects the form of the 

of gum arabic, camphor, red saunderswood, and sublimate. All 
the pills and pastes which are advertised for (he cure of Gonorrhoea, 
Syphilis, &c, &c, are composed of aloes, gamboge, colocynth, 
ginger, balsam copaiba, cubebs, and oxmuriate of mercury. Dr. 
Chilton (one of the best chemists in this country) has recently 
analysed " Hunter's Red Drop.'' 1 The following statement of his 
report, will be found in the New-York Sun paper of August 28th, 
1843 : — " I have analysed the contents of a bottle left with me by 
Mr. Charles Brown, and find it to consist of corrosive sublimate 
and alcohol, with a little red colouring matter. The proportion of 
corrosive sublimate is ten grains to the ounce of liquid ; the bottle 
was labelled as follows — 'Hunter's Red Drop, directions-^-12 drops 
morning and evening, in water, molasses, or syrup. Dr. U. Leyi- 
son.' The vial was stamped 'Hunter's Red Drop.' New- York, 
August 24th, 1843. , j , JAMES R. CHILTON." 



The Venereal Disease, fyc. 43 

preparation, and its dose ; these are matters which 
require the most nice discrimination. Mercurials 
are among the edge tools of Physic, and require to 
be wielded by a competent and practiced hand. 

True Syphilis ihen,is that disease in which the chan- 
cre or primary ulcer on the genitals, has a hardened 
edge and base ; in which the blotches are scaly, ivith 
excavated ulcers in the throat, or when affections of 
the bones are complained of; those patients only are 
truly syphilitic who have nightly pains in the shafts 
of the long bones, or decided enlargement of the 
bone, all other cases, although approaching in many 
of their characters to syphilis are not to be consi- 
dered as such, but as they generally proceed from 
sexual intercourse the term " Venereal" is still ap- 
plied to them. 

As to the treatment of true syphilitic chancre, 
this, as I before mentioned, can be cured without 
mercury ; but this does not warrant the assertion, 
that mercury ought not to be employed occasionally 
in some stages of the disease ; when judiciously 
administered in aggravated cases it sometimes expe- 
dites that process. 

From the foregoing description, it appears then, 
that venereal sores, or the swollen condition of the 
glands of the groin, termed bubo, may occur without 
the general system being at all contaminated ; but, 
when the poison has been conveyed into the blood, 
unless proper remedies be applied, another order of 
parts inevitably become affected, namely, the skin, 
the tonsils, the nose, throat, inside of the mouth and 
tongue. When absorption of the syphilitic virus 
has taken place, ulceration of the throat is the ear- 
liest indication of the general disease, but the erup- 



44 Symptoms and Treatment of 

tion of the skin is usually considered the first of the 
constitutional symptoms ; this, when truly syphilitic, 
is scaly, affording an excellent guide in the treatment; 
a circumstance by which it may be distinguished 
from those venereal eruptions which neither require 
nor bear mercury, which are either pimples, pustules* 
or elevated tubercles. The mucous membrane of 
the nose is liable to be affected by this disease as 
well as the lining membrane of the throat. Ulcera- 
tion in this part very speedily affects the bones, 
which become diseased, and are thrown off, the pa- 
tient losing the natural prominence of the nose, as 
well as the acuteness of smell, and acquiring a most 
unpleasant peculiarity of tone in speaking. The 
bones often separate long after the syphilitic action 
has ceased ; and the treatment of this variety of 
disease is similar to its management when occurring, 
in other parts of the body. Under proper treatment 
no person perhaps lost his nose from syphilis, but 
the instances are very numerous, in which this de- 
formity has arisen from the abuse of mercury. 
Affections of the bones in syphilis (or after the pri- 
mary symptoms have disappeared) are often mista- 
ken for Rheumatism. Pain in the bones is often 
the indication of syphilitic action, after not merely 
the healing of local sores, but even after ulceration 
in the throat and eruptive blotches upon the skin 
have entirely passed away ; it would seem that there 
is an order of parts, mostly but not always, attacked 
in succession, of which the solid structure of the 
bones, as well as their fibrous investment are usually 
the last to suffer. 

A most important feature in the history of syphili- 
tic diseases, is the fact of their transmission from 



The Venereal Disease, fyc. 45 

parent to offspring. Infants may be affected with 
syphilis in various ways. They may be diseased 
before birth, in consequence of the state of one or 
both of the parents. Dr. Burns, in his work on 
" Midwifery," observes, " that infection may happen 
when neither of the parents has at the time any 
venereal swelling or ulceration, and perhaps many 
years after a cure has been apparently affected. I 
do not," he says, " pretend to explain here the theory 
of syphilis, but content myself with relating xuell 
established facts ." In such cases it is very common 
for the mother to miscarry, or have a premature 
labour without evident cause ; frequently the infant, 
born before the time, has been preceded by one or 
two dead children. It may be clean, and apparently 
healthy, and continue so during a month or two, but 
oftener it is feeble and emaciated, having a wrinkled 
countenance, with the appearance of old age in 
miniature. Presently the eyes are inflamed, its cry 
is husky, low and murmuring, there is purulent dis- 
charge from the eye-lids, often, though not invariably^ 
resulting from syphilitic contamination ; copper 
coloured blotches, ending in ulceration, appear on the 
shrivelled skin, the nostrils become stuffed, with a 
•foetid discharge ; the voice becomes hoarse or whist- 
ling, the throat becomes involved in the ulcerative 
process, if indeed, as rarely happens, the child 
lives long enough to arrive at that state. If the un- 
conscious helpless babe receives the infection from its 
hired nurse, we discover ulcers on her nipples, and 
the disease appears on the childs mouth before the 
surface of the body is affected — sometimes within 
twenty-four hours after their entrance into the world. 
Such children have the palms of the hands, the soles 



46 Symptoms and Treatment of 

of the feet, or the buttocks, covered with copper- 
coloured eruptions, the nails at the same time begin- 
ning to peel off; and, unless something-be done for 
the little sufferers, they will quickly be carried off 
from the violence of the disease ; indeed many chil- 
dren die of it in consequence of the true nature of 
the complaint not being understood by the medical 
practitioner. 

A case is recorded by Hunter, of a couple having 
been married for twelve years, during which time 
neither party had been unfaithful to the other, nor 
were either diseased ; the husband had had syphilis 
two years previously to his marriage, but considered 
himself cured ; about this time the lady bore him 
herfifth child ; her two first children were healthy, 
but the two following were feeble, and soon died ; 
the lady also, was in poor health ; the last child was 
put out to nurse, and being itself afflicted with 
blotches resembling venereal, and having a sore 
mouth, the narse became affected both locally (on 
the nipples) and constitutionally, with a disease bear- 
ing every similitude to syphilis. Why this disease 
should lurk in the system for many years to deve- 
lope its action on the child in the womb, or through 
what agency this connection is produced, we know' 
not. That the association does exist, it would be 
futile to contradict ; in fact it frequently occurs that 
we can trace in infants a regular continuity of the 
action of this virulent poison from its parent. Once 
having entered the system, and identified itself with 
the circulating fluids, it engenders a thousand fierce 
and contending symptoms, which maybe indefinitely 
postponed ; but so long as a germ remains in the 



The Venereal Disease, fyc. 47 

constitution, a hostile action may be expected, and 
its half extinguished energy again usurps its power, 
with gradual and terrible progress. 

It is to be hoped that, the foregoing outline of the 
diseases, arising from impure sexual contact, will be 
found sufficiently precise, to demonstrate at once 
their complexity and importance. Let not false 
delicacy induce the sufferer to hazard the dangerous 
experiment of the management of his own case. 
Without any knowledge of the modifications which 
individual temperament produces on the character of 
disease — without an intimate acquaintance with the 
nature of disease, rather than with the mere history 
of symptoms — ignorant of the precise operation of 
powerful remedies, for such a one to turn those 
engines of good or of evil upon himself, is a species 
of weakness truly pitiable. 

Attempts at self -cure are too frequently finished 
in self-destruction. It has been said (and not with, 
out truth) that in the practice of the law, " He who 
conducts his own case has a fool for his client ;" and 
much more emphatically may the assertion painfully 
apply to those who turn, in weakness and suffering, 
their ill-judged remedies against themselves. The 
practitioners of the healing art are generally wiser, 
and silently teach the unprofessional world an impor- 
tant lesson, in refusing to prescribe for themselves, 
however trivial or temporary may be their ailments. 







CHAPTER IV. 

SENSUALISM. 
Its General Results — Mental, Moral and Physical, 

There is no study more interesting or useful than 
that of the admirable relation existing between the 
structure of any of the organs of the human frame, 
and the natural and healthful actions those organs 
are destined to perform. These relative connections 
are so close and immediate, so essential, not merely 
to our personal comfort, but to the happiness and 
well being of that social circle, either enlivened by 
our presence or embittered by our distresses, that 
it becomes an absolute duty, as well as our highest 
interest, to familiarize the mind with the wise 
economy of animal nature. 

These remarks apply with the greatest amount of 
force to those sub-divisions of the living system, 
respecting which it may be truly affirmed, that if the 
consequences of irregularity be not immediate, they 
are ultimately as deplorable as their approach has 
been insidious. If the stomach be filled to reple- 
tion, or if some improper irritant be received within 
its cavity, if the digestive organs be oppressed with 



Sensualism and its Results. 49 

acid crudities, vomiting or increased action of the 
intestinal canal, from the natural and instantaneous 
relief,undcr the pressure and presence of the unhealth- 
ful load, Nature resumes her wonted elasticity of 
tone — the balance of harmonious action is restored; 
if the impropriety be not too frequently repeated, the 
general health of the system undergoes no material 
deterioration. The stomach, unlike other organs, 
cannot be lashed into the gratification of appetite 
with unnatural readiness ; it is endowed with the 
power -of instantly disengaging that, which if it re-, 
tained would be productive of disease ; but the case 
is widely different, if we transfer this reasoning from 
the nutritive or digestive organs, to the generative .or 
reproductive system. ; for such is the mysterious 
connections between our mental and purely corporeal 
and physical nature — such the readiness with which- 
the organs of the reproductive faculty obey the sti~ 
mulus of a morbidly sensitive, inflamed and excited 
imagination, that under its influence, poor wearied 
jaded nature, fain willing to recruit her exhausted 
energies by time and repose, is roused again and 
again to emissions of the seminal secretion, which 
is the most elaborate and valuable fluid of the human 
frame.* 

In many instances the form of excess is natural 
as to the act, and the mischief resulting from its fre- 
quency, will of course be limited by .the capability 
of its performance. But it may be, (which is de- 
plorable, beyond the power of language to depict,) 
that this excess assumes a horribly unnatural cha- 
racter, and in this instance it is impossible to define 

* See the Bachelor's Guide. 
5 



50* Sensualism and its Results. 

the limits of those mental and moral disquietudes, the 
nature and exquisite acuteness of those sufferings 
which follow in the train. It is a remarkable fact, that 
the miserable victims of sensual excess, more especi- 
ally those addicted to self -pollution, (whet e the loss is 
greater and more frequent than in the natural act,) 
are especially prone to insanity, or if reason main- 
tain her tottering throne, it is only that of decrepi- 
tude and premature loss of manly power. In con- 
firmation of this remark, I am glad to quote the 
high authority of the late Dr. John Armstrong, whose 
recent removal from a sphere of popularity and use- 
fulness, as a leading Metropolitan Physician, and 
teacher of medicine, will long be deplored by the 
profession, of which he constituted so brilliant an 
ornament. He observes, in his published lectures, 
l \ Excess of venery and the solitary vice of Onan- 
ism excite Madness ; they both stimulate the heart 
excessively ; they both tend to gorge the brain and 
spinal cord, and they tend to render the individual, 
Mad" In another place he remarks — " The same 
state (insanity) may arise from certain solitary prac- 
tices ; and I know of no individuals whose state is 
so deplorable as theirs, who give themselves up as 
slaves to unbridled passions." There are 'also 
specific forms of local and constitutional disease 
resulting from venereal excesses, which must not be 
omitted in the black catalogue of the consequences 
of sensualism. These are the result of infectious 
contamination ; some of them inflicting much suffer- 
ing, yet restricted to the production of functional 
disorder; others terminating in such changes of 
structure as lay the foundation for years of future 
agony and shame. Thus the poison of gonorrhoea 



Sensualism and Us Results. 51 

or clap, ordinarily exciting nothing beyond specific 
yet temporary inflammation of the living mucous 
membrane of the canal leading to the bladder, though 
attended with exquisite torture,, subsides under judi- 
cious treatment, after the lapse of a short period, 
and no permanent injury to the generative organs is 
afterwards perceptible. But in other cases the in- 
flammatory action being of a severer character, the 
poison more intense, or the constitutional suscepti- 
bilites more acute ; we find that thickening of the 
delicate membrane of the urinary canal lays the 
foundation of permanent and often incurable disor- 
ganization, ordinarily denominated stricture. Here 
then, we have an absolutely diseased deviation from 
the natural conformation essential to the healthy 
action of the generative organs; retention of urine, 
(often till the miserable patient has been known to 
have perished from bursting of the bladder,) the pain 
•connected with the frequent introduction of the 
catheter, for the evacuation of that cavity ; these 
form only a part of the dreadful penalty appended 
to the folly of illicit excesses. Inaptitude for the 
rational indulgences of ,the marriage bed ; the shame, 
yexation and suffering inflicted upon a warm, passion- 
ate, yet virtuous, wife ; the embarrassment and strug- 
gling pain co-incident with every attempt to gratify 
legitimate desires ; all are the ultimate consequences 
of stricture. 

Melancholy has been the fate of modern times, 
since the venereal poison was first known and pro- 
pagated, and sad are the sensations which must 
naturally ajrise in the mind of every friend of hu- 
manity, who considers its nature and progress. This 
destructive agent acts riot merely upon individual 



52 Sensualism and its Results. 

life, but it contaminates its very spring, transmitting 
its horrid influences to generations yet unborn. It 
embitters life's sweetest enjoyments, separates hus- 
band and wife, parents from the affection of their chil- 
dren, and inflicts a stab upon domestic peace, which, 
however forgivingly the tender look of woman's eye 
may heal the offensive wound, a scar remains upon 
memory and affection while life endures. It breaks 
down the vigor of lusty youth, covering the body 
with loathsome ulcers, or destroying the bones, and 
thus defacing the manly beauty (of the human face 
divine.) The sonorous voice exchanges its deep rich 
tones for a pitiable, contemptible nasal twang ; thus 
compelling the miserable victim, with every word he 
indistinctly utters, to pronounce his own shame. Such 
are the revolting features of syphilitic disorganiza- 
tion ; its horrible mutilations are shudderingly hate- 
ful beyond conception; to crawl upon the face of 
this fair earth, a noisome mass of living rottenness ; 
to waste into hideous decay, from slowly consuming, 
disease and pain — pain which leaves the mind in full 
consciousness to brood over past folly ; to defile the 
germ of humanity at the very threshold and onset of 
its being, to transmit the seeds of disease to inno- 
cent helpless infancy; to hear the feeble husky wail, 
and look upon the hue, which marks the contamina- 
tion of the child which hangs at the breast of a fond 
and virtuous mother — that child which ought to con- 
stitute the pride and joy of a father's heart, but to 
whom his first has been a feeble, puny and diseased 
organization; the counterpart of his own, the trans- 
cript of his own excesses; surely if there be within 
one latent spark of sensibility, that infant cry will 
harrow inmost feeling, will chase it out, will lash us 



Sensualism and its Results. 53 

with a scorpion whip, or, feeble though it be, speak 
hi dead whispers to the remorseful soul. Possibly 
the victim of sensualism may have been spared the 
pains of parental agony, no wife may be there to 
pity and to forgive, paid mercenaries surround his 
couch ; he has ran the round of guilty pleasure, till 
giddy and weak, he falls upon that couch to die ; 
*he wreck of youth, and hope, and life, together 
blended in one awful desolation. Who amongst us 
is not familiar with the history of some once promising 
youth whose noon-tide sun of existence has been 
•thus in tears and death beclouded 1 To die — so to 
slink into the grave, to be remembered only with 
fearful regret, to forego the affectionate recollection 
of surviving friends. These form the slight, yet 
faithful outlines of a stern reality, and if the con- 
templation of the picture deter but one thoughtless 
youth from the path of folly, how much of human 
misery may thereby be prevented. It is salutary to 
ponder over the consequences of sensualism ; her 
facinations derive more than half their charms from 
our ignorance of the hidden sting that in the end 
will " bite like an adder." Were these results ever 
present in all their power and permanency, could we 
strip the gaudy flattering mask from present sensual 
gratification, surely we should pause, rather than 
with reckless, desperate heedlessness, rush upon 
disease, misery and ruin ; for 

ff Vice is a monster of such frightful mein, 
That to be hated needs but to be seen." 

The late Sir Astley Cooper, Bart., sergeant surgeon 
to his late Majesty, observes — "If one of these 
miserable cases could be depicted from the pulpit as 
an illustration of the evil effects of a vicious anxl 



54 Sensualism and its Results. 

intemperate course of life, it would, I think, strike 
the mind with more terror than all the preaching in 
the world. The irritable state of the patient leads 
to the destruction of life, and in this way, annually, 
great numbers perish. Undoubtedly the list is con- 
siderably augmented, from the maltreatment and the 
employment of injudicious remedies" 

In the infancy of medical science the wisest 
practice was but empirical, and though, it must be 
admitted, we are yet advanced little further than the 
threshold of those sublime portals which ever stand 
invitingly open to the laborious lover of truth, yet it 
is something to know, that the absurd remedies of 
ancient days are worse than useless ; it is, beyond 
conception, valuable to hold the torch of science to 
the book of nature, and to apply our existing 
amount of knowledge to the elucidation of the 
causes, and the mitigation and cure of disease. It 
is well understood, that in reference to syphilitic 
cases, the majority of deaths arise from mismanage- 
ment, improper treatment, or the abuse of active 
and powerful medicinal preparations, by those who, 
suffering from these diseases, from timidity, fear, or 
shame, rather venture upon the hazardous experi- 
ment of self-cure, than consult at once a practitioner, 
who has devoted the energies of a laborious life in 
their exclusive study. No position appears theo- 
retically so clear and undeniable, yet there is none 
which some are so unwilling to act upon as this, that 
division of energy, concentration of attention, neces- 
sarily produces the same beneficial results in the 
practice of the healing art, as is obvious in the vari- 
ous other departments of human effort. Even in 
the surgical profession, have not confirmations been 



Sensualism and its Results. 55 

forced upon us of the truth of this principle ? — 
Guthrie, White,- Adams, Jacob, Saunders, Travers ; 
the names of men who have added much to our 
practical acquaintance with the surgery of the eye, 
are familiar, as connected with institutions devoted 
exclusively to the relief of the affections of that 
organ. 

And, if the cultivation of one department of sur- 
gical practice in the hands of zealous men, enthusi- 
astically devoted to their favourite task, tend to the 
elevation of knowledge and the possession of a 
greater number of use fid remedies, by a parity of 
reasoning, the same attention on the part of other 
individuals, to the path which the writer has selected, 
cannot fail, ultimately, to remove much of the oppro- 
brium connected with the uncertainties of the medi- 
cal art. The writings of Gooch, Burns, Merriman, 
Davies, Ingleby, Ryan, and others, have a practical 
value enstamped upon them, derivable from the fact, 
that those men devoted themselves almost exclusively 
to the management of the. diseases and accidents to 
which woman, in the hour . of sorrow and peril, is 
liable ; and we have no hesitation in citing the pre- 
sent low rate of mortality among parturient mothers, 
to the dissemination of sounder principles of treat- 
ment among those to whose care they are confided 
at that important moment. If then, even within the 
pale of our own profession,* we have abundant evi- 

* It is with this view, and for the separation of my legitimate 
claims, as an educated Practitioner % from the pretentions of illiter- 
ate empirics, to whose mismanagement, through the apathy and 
neglect of the regular Physician, sexual diseases are too often 
entrusted, that I have deemed it more satisfactory to append the 
diplomas and testimonials, which will be found at the close of this 



56 Sensualism and its Results. 

dence of the amount of general good resulting from 
division of labour, that which holds practically true 
of one department, will assuredly be found equally 
to obtain in any other, The experience of the mili- 
tary surgeons, in referrence to venereal practice, is, 
as far as it goes, most amply confirmatory of the 
truth of these observations. 

It is worthy of remark, that beyond the more 
open forms of syphilitic disorganization, which 
leave their ugly trace most obviously, there is not a 
single form of sensualism that is not branded with 
its external, yet significant, mark of recognition. 

Let not the intensely prurient, yet seemingly mo- 
dest victim of secret pollution, lay the flattering 
unction to his soul, that from the eye of his fellow 
mortals he can conceal his unmanly vice. It is 
written upon his forehead, it is enstamped upon his 
visage ; his sunken countenance, his frail unmeaning, 
inexpressive face, his lustreless eye, his attenuated 
frame, his quick abashed retreat from the gaze 
of virtuous woman ; all proclaim the enfeebled 
votary of solitary vice ; a worse than " Monk ob- 
scene." Here then is the one form of the fulfilment 
of that prediction — " There is nothing done in secret 
that shall not be revealed, neither hid even from wen 
that shall not be known" How much more inti- 
mately to the Omniscent God ? It is fabled of the 
Ostrich that she is so devoid of reasoning intelli- 

volume. Among all the advertising Doctors with which this city 
abounds, there are only two who are legally qualified, the balance 
are self-styled Physicians; men of no attainments, practical ex- 
perience, and without common education. Most of those empirica 
go under assumed names, and are perfectly reckless of human 
life. 



Sensualism and its Results. 57 

gence as to hide her head from her pursuers in the 
nearest thicket, unconsious that her enormous body 
is unconcealed. And can a stronger illustration be 
afforded of the effects of sensualism, in darkening 
the understanding, than is found in the fact that the 
victims of solitary vice dare to gratify their depraved 
propensity in the admitted gaze of the Omnipresent 
Eye, while they would redden with shame to be de- 
tected in the fact by a child, or even the meanest 
mortal that lives ? Horrible perversity of Nature's 
keenest pleasure. How stupifying is that infatua- 
tion, which deliberately, yet secretly, poisons the 
power of manly enjoyment ? deprives the lord of 
this fair world of those temperate gratifications, 
which the Great Author of Creation has permitted, 
nay, possitively enjoined and commanded. " Increase 
and multiply, that you may replenish the earth," is 
alike the dictate of nature and revelation ; the suf- 
fering then of the violator of this provision ; his 
living death, is but the first consequence of his; 
criminality. . 

However the Scottish poet Burns might feel dis- 
posed to " waive the quantum o' the sin," or however 
in a work intended for practical and popular use, we 
may feel disposed to refrain from moralizing on the 
nature of vice, or with him think lightly of " the 
hazard o' concealing," we cannot pass lightly over 
its results, inasmuch as these are physical, as well as 
moral, and mental ; and it can only be a just appli- 
cation of the character of these results, that wise 
curative intentions can be founded. Mental and 
moral aberations require, and absolutely demand treat- 
ment, having reference to a morbid train of thought. 
For, apart from other considerations, as it is true of 



58 Sensualism and its Results. 

every form of vice, so most especially of this : — 

" Tt hardens a* within, 

And petrifies the feelin'." 

One part then of our mode of treatment is the incul- 
cation of right feelings, in reference to the conse- 
quences of self-indulgence. 

It is recorded of Archbishop Cranmer, that being 
brought to the stake, in those troublesome times, 
when religious frenzy and political fury were pro- 
digally reckless of human life, he exclaimed in the 
torments of the fire, as he thrust his right arm 
amidst the glowing faggots, " That unworthy hand? 
With that hand he had signed his recantation; and 
when the light of truth enables the poor victim of 
detestable vice, to utter against himself a similar 
apostrophe, the consequences of his folly are all 
that remain to be overcome. The willing slave of 
corruption sinks fast into premature wretchedness as 
his enjoyments are illusory; so unreal miseries 
throng his pathway, and strew with thorns his cold, 
dark and dreary passage to the grave. The deli- 
berate destroyer of his own soul — his end is dark- 
ness, remorse, and despair. There are men in whom 
every source of vital sensation and enjoyment is so 
exhausted, in whom every germ of activity and hap- 
piness is so deadened, that they find nothing so insi- 
pid, so disagreeable and disgustful, as life; they 
have no longer any sympathies in common with their 
fellow-men ; the pitiable slaves of unbridled pas- 
sion, it is given to them to know and feel their 
degradation. Existence becomes an oppressive 
burthen. They cannot withstand the wish to P shuf- 
fle off this mortal coil." They have found by pain- 
ful experience, that the immoderate and exclusive 



Sensualism and its Results. 59 

pursuit of gratifications of animal nature, tend to 
the destruction of all capacity and all legitimate en- 
joyment. These unfortunate beings are for the 
most part, such as by youthful dissipation, by too 
early and profuse waste of the seminal fluid, have 
exhausted the flagging powers of life, and ante-dated, 
in the bloom of youth, the deeripitude of old age- 
To such I would extend the friendly aid, which, ere 
madness or incurable impotence preclude the at- 
tempt, may yet snatch the poor weak sufferer from 
a worse than living death. With many, the hour of 
hopeless self-devotion is still distant. The conse- 
quences of criminal indulgence may not now be very 
apparent, or the nervous ailments besetting the un- 
happy patient, may be ascribed ignorantly to any but 
the true causes. However, ill habits rapidly acquire- 
the form of exalted vice, subjecting reason, appetite 
and passion, under indiscriminate controul. To the 
fearful I offer the way of escape from the dominion., 
as well as from the consequences of sensualism. 

To him in whom the divine light of reason is not 
altogether obscured ; to the poor misguided, yet, un- 
willing slave of perverted enjoyment, I offer ihe 
means of restoration to pristine vigour, and the enjoy- 
ment of a pleasing home. There are many of our 
youth of the present dav, who by excessive indul- 
gence and unnatural over stimulation of those organs, 
the development of which is peculiar to manhood, 
have called into active disease the lungs or the brain. 
Predispositions, otherwise so latent, as with care to 
be kept at bay during a long existence, hav 
nursed by early sensualism into forms of coi 
tive disease, so accurately resembling true sen ; lous 
phthisis as to defy {while the cause is undet 



60 Sensualism and its Results. 

the ordinary modes adopted for the mitigation of its 
most urgent symptoms. 

Among the ordinary causes of disease' enumerated 
by practical physicians, none are so prominently 
obvious as excessive evacuations, produced naturally 
or otherwise ; and it is undoubtedly true, that super- 
vening or extraordinary excitement, the weaker 
organs of a naturally robust or delicate frame, will 
be the first to feel the loss of nervous or sensorial 
energy, of that power, which, carefully guarded, is 
our surest protection in warding off the attacks of 
disease, and our most powerful ally in resisting its 
noxious agency when present. Loss of blood, if 
repeated, even though trivial in quantity, is a sure 
and readily acknowledged index of corresponding 
failure of the vital powers ; but the daily drain upon 
the nervous system from the loss of the most curi- 
ously elaborate secretion from the blood, is still 
more rapidly destructive. 

The debility produced by this evacuation is greater 
than any other, inasmuch as important and extensive 
portions of the brain are concerned in the production 
of this secretion. The miserable victim of unbri- 
dled sensualism sinks into the grave, harrassed with 
cough and hectic fever, the cause of death being 
mostly ascribed, loosely, and with unpardonable neg- 
ligence, to disease of the lungs or heart* whereas, 
had a confession of the true state of the case been 
confidentially reposed in the proper quarter, a vary- 
ing treatment, or the moral or mental management 
of the unhappy sufferer, might have been attended 
with widely varying results. It is a matter of equal 
surprise and regret, that the legitimate guardians of 
the public health, are not sufficiently alive to the 



Sensualism and its Results. 61 

prevalency of sensualism as the exciting cause of 
disease, unless with a gentleness and address that 
few can assume, or really possess, the secret be 
extorted from the pining hypocondriacal sufferer, it is 
hardly probable that voluntarily, the important dis- 
closure should be made to the usual medical attendant 
of the family. His silence is doubtlessly often 
ascribed to ignorance, apathy, or both. 

The customs of society, the usages of the profes- 
sion, seemingly forbid such inquiries ; the fear the 
suspicion may be false, the consequences resulting 
from questions conveying unmanly imputations, these 
may often operate upon the minds of medical mep, 
in leading them to observe absolute silence upon 
such topics. The natural and inevitable result of 
this inattention to one of the most ordinary of the 
exciting causes of disease, is, that patients of this 
class, who are unfortunately placed under the care 
of the family physician, meet, for the most part, at 
his hands, a mode of treatment which only serves to 
aggravate existing evils. 

Anomalous cases are of frequent recurrence in 
persons of both sexes, where languor, lassitude, and 
general inaptitude for the business or enjoyments of 
life, perhaps constant headache or pain in the limbs, 
irritable cough, irregularity in the action of the heart, 
or most commonly of all, that long train of hypo- 
chondriacal disorder connected with indigestion, form 
the subject of complaint in the ear of the routine 
practitioner. Let persons suffering thus, be brought 
under the ordinary cognizance of medical art; under 
the eye of one who has not deemed it compatible 
with his professional dignity, to devote special at- 
tention to the mischievous effects of self-abuse ; and 

6 



62 Sensualism and its Results, 

if his patient complain of headache, he will most 
probably prescribe such depletory remedies as are 
applicable with propriety, only to an over-gorged 
brain. What must be the consequence if pain arise, 
not from repletion of the vessels of the head, but 
as we know it may, from exhaustion of nervous or 
sensorial poioer, from sexual excesses, from the con- 
stant irritation and drain upon the secretory appara- 
tus of the generative system ? A patient already 
exhausted by undue excitement, is ignorantly sub- 
jected to a mode of treatment which is injurious in 
exact proportion as it is erroneous. The feeble re- 
mains of active vitality left him by his. pernicious 
practices, are sure to be overthrown and destroyed, 
" secundem artem" by the ■' usual remedies." Here, 
then, arises a proof of the importance and necessity 
of the arrangement, whereby some well-informed 
members of the medical profession, should devote 
their exclusive attention to the diseases arising from 
the undue excitement of the generative system, toge- 
ther with those incidental forms of acute disorder, 
which, if neglected, terminate in the horribly wasting 
forms of constitutional disorganization. 

The hidden entrance of these avenues to the grave 
is often the long indulged and concealed habits of 
self-pollution. Now, whatever may be the amount of 
individual talent, or however successful the general 
treatment of a popular practitioner, in the ordinary run 
of cases, death maintains the silence of his sanctuary, 
or the climate is assigned as the uncongenial har- 
binger of consumption ; the untold secret is pre- 
served inviolable in the cold receptacle of medical 
errors and stately professional ignorance ; his repu- 
tation suffers not. What I would urge upon the 



Sensualism and its ^Results. 63 

serious consideration of the public, is this, that a 
person totally unaccustomed to detect and investigate 
such cases, is absolutely unfit, and unlikely to suc- 
ceed in his first attempt. His hand, his eye, his 
touch, require to be trained to the well practiced 
effort. He must possess the incommunicable tact 
requistite, first to gain, and afterwards to secure, the 
confidence of his patient. He must be able to sym- 
pathize with the deplorable weakness of his nature, 
from a rational estimate of the power and prevalency 
of mere animal impulse, and possess that deep ac- 
quaintance with the human heart, which will enable 
him to correct with tenderness its perverted wan- 
derings. Unhappily there has long existed in this 
country, an aversion among medical practitioners, to 
the selection of this peculiar department of duty ; 
the diseases of women and children, practical mid- 
wifery, the operative surgery of the eye or ear, den- 
tition and the diseases of the teeth; these have 
formed, for many of the mostdistinguished ornaments 
of our profession, the ready avenue to scientific dis- 
tinction and personal wealth. The author of these 
pages is content to brave the tide of squeamish 
fastidiousness. He is conscious that in selecting 
a peculiar department of practice, he has been, and 
is, the instrument of much practical good ; that he 
has not lived in vain. The grateful eye of the re- 
turning wanderer, the rosy hue of health on the pre- 
viously blanched cheek of premature manhood — 
these are the trophies of usefulness, and they carry 
to the heart a more than ample exchange for the 
sneers of the ignorant, or the envy of the malicious. 



CHAPTER V. 



Practical observations on the Surgical Anatomy and Physiology 
of the sexual organs. 

There exists among mankind a natural desire to 
fulfil the primitive intention of the Great Author of 
our being which secures the perpetuity of our species. 
The sexual propensity is alike the dictate of chas- 
tened passion, correct sentiment, and creative impulse. 
This desire irresistably impels all to wish the re- 
moval of those infirmities in both sexes which im- 
pede its object. Incapacity for propagation is 
instinctively felt to be a degrading evil. Hence 
sexual diseases are of the greatest importance, 
whether we regard them as tending to restrict or 
enfeeble a future population, or in their immediate 
results, as fatal to individual happiness. A more 
accurate and enlarged acquaintance with the general 
structure of the reproductive organs, is absolutely 
• essential to the comprehension of the nature of the 
mischief consequent upon undue sensual excitement. 
From the complicated machinery employed in the 
formation and conveyance of the seminal fluid, it is 
evident that nature has intended the importance of a 
sound and healthy state of parts to be highly appre- 
ciated and well understood by those for whose use 



Physiology of the Seconal Organs, 65 

and pleasure it was destined. Now in the two 
frequent and prodigal emission of this prolific liquor, 
it is manifest a great variety of organs must be cal- 
led into unnecessary action, suffering from immediate 
local irritations, and that, at no distant period, owing 
to the law of sympathy, the brain and nervous sys- 
tem, the stomach and digestive organs, must follow 
in this suffering train. A healthy condition of the 
reproductive apparatus is of the utmost importance, 
in regard to the maintenance of constitutional energy, 
inasmuch as the fluid secreted by the testicles, can 
again be returned and received into the mass of circu- 
lating blood.* That this really takes place, and that 
muscular vigour is thereby enhanced, is susceptible of 
direct proof; and the debility consequent upon its 
undue discharge, is a negative confirmation of the 
same truth. Like the brain, therefore, the genital 
organs in close relation with the nervous system, 
form the appropriate index of manly power, and 
injury or abuse of either exerts a corresponding de- 
trimental influence upon the general health. It is an 
unniversally admitted doctrine, that the blood is truly 
vital ; and if among the excretions, the semen be the 
only fluid re-absorbed into the mass of living circu- 
lating blood, how shall we escape the conclusion 
adopted by many Physiologists, that the semen — 
that which is abl-e to quicken into action the future 
being, is also itself alive ; or can we imagine a more 
fit vehicle for restoring and supporting our own vital 
power. " It is impossible to deny that the male or 
female, or both, or united genital fluids, are alive, 
because, from their union, or one influenced by the 

* For further information on this subject, see " The Bachelor's 
Guide." 

6* 



66 The Anatomy and 

other, a living being is produced, which partakes of 
the vital qualities of each parent. Accordingly, 
Blumenbach grants both male and female genital 
fluids to be alive, 

We are sufficiently taught by experience, that the 
body does not acquire its full solidity and consistence 
until the genital development has attained maturity ; 
affording the most evident proof, that this arrange- 
ment is not destined merely for others, but in a most 
especial manner for ourselves, possessing so extra- 
ordinary an influence over our whole system, as to 
impress, at the period of commencing manhood, a 
new character and feeling upon our entire being. 
Under this expansive agency, man acquires a new 
propensity to growth ; his form obtains expression, 
his muscles and bones the requisite solidity, ihe 
voice becomes full and strong, in a word, he is now 
both a man in body and soul. Many animals about 
this period acquire parts entirely new, such as horns 
and antlers, which never appear if the creature, 
when young, has been castrated. This shows how 
strong must be the force and influence of the new 
powers acquired by the sexual organs. If the de- 
cisive and direct confirmation of these views be 
deemed unsatisfactory, it is certain that no loss of 
any fluid, not even of blood, weakens the vital pow- 
er so rapidly, and in so evident a manner, as a pro- 
fuse waste of the generative juices. Nothing gives 
life so much stimulus and activity as their free 
secretion, and conversely, nothing so soon produces 
dejection and disgust, as their exhaustion and loss. 

Let us briefly glance at the anatomical and 
surgical peculiarities of the male genitals. The 
most simple division will be to adopt the order of 



Physiology of the Sexual Organs. 67 

nature, which has provided secretory glands for the 
elimination from the blood of the vivifying semen r 
and secondly, appropriate channels for its discharge. 
It is obvious, that it was requisite it should be de- 
posited safely within the cavities destined for the 
growth of the future embryo, and for this purpose, 
the urinary canal of the male, which forms a com- 
mon outlet, is made to pass along an erectile tissue, 
which, when distended with blood, requires sufficient 
firmness to effect the necessary penetration. So 
the sensations which accompany the natural act of 
mission, may be added as a further evidence of the 
. ast importance of that fluid. All other evacuations 
are easily expelled without pleasurable excitement,* 
but this, if unnaturally produced, aggravates the 
epileptic convulsion inseperable from the act, and 
the momentary languor becomes changed into per- 
manent and deplorable imbecility. The feebleness 
which follows ordinary emission, shows how much 
the body loses when it parts with this important 
fluid ; all the energies of manhood are necessary to 
replace it ; and in extreme age, or from the presence 
of disease f of the heart, sudden death has been known 
to result from the violent shock which the nervous 
system undergoes from the effort. Morgani, a cele- 
brated Italian Physician, relates a case where death 
took place under the circumstances just cited. So 
Plateros gives an instance of a magistrate of a Swiss 
city, who married a second time, at an advanced 
period of life, and when he was endeavouring to 
consumate his nuptuals, he was obliged to discon- 
tinue. The like accident happened to him every 

* See " The Bachelor's Guide" for a more minute description of 
this subject. 



68 The Anatomy and 

time he made the same attempt. He applied to a 
variety of quacks. One assured him, after he had 
taken several remedies, that he had nothing further 
to apprehend. He ventured a fresh essay upon the 
faith of his JEsculapius, the event was immediately 
the same as before, but being resolved to go through 
with the ^operation, he died in the very act in the 
arms of his wife. I recollect a case somewhat simi- 
lar. A misguided youth whose powers had become 
enfeebled by self-pollution, suffered the usual penalty. 
He was tormented with intense desire, but on at- 
tempting to gratify himself in the natural way, foi^ p 
to his surprise, that his libidinous practices had ,\ 
completely perverted animal instinct, that erection 
was impossible ; and after long and irksome struggle 
with the baffled partner of his bed, sudden pain 
darting through the head, compelled him to desist 
ungratified. The next evening he was equally pow- 
erless, and in a state bordering upon madness, he 
confessed to me the consciousness of the cause of 
his inability. Judicious treatment, very steadily 
pursued, atoned for the visious perversion of his 
powers ; and he is now fully competent to discharge 
those natural duties inseperable from due erection 
and firmness of the external organ. There is no 
phenomenon in nature more singular than the erec- 
tile power of the virile member. It is indispensable 
to the accomplishment of the generative act, and the 
perversion or loss of this power, from unnatural prac- 
tices, is an inevitable calamity. A certain amount 
of distention and firmness appears to be absolutely 
requisite for its due performance; hence the miserable 
sensualist, who has accustomed himself to erection 
from friction or manual irritation^ without the natural 



Physiology of the Sexual Organs. 69 

force of ordinary erection, finds, on attempting the gen- 
erative act, that however strong the desire, the organ 
does not acquire the necessary firmness to penetrate 
the female genitals, or effuses the seminal fluid before 
the entrance is effected. Ordinarily the instinctive 
tendency to the sexual act, or repletion of the seminal 
vessels, produces erection ; if, however, the morbid 
imagination be the immediate exciting cause, it is 
seldom permanent ; excretion being, in such cases, 
scarcely possible, unless some mechanical and unna- 
tural irritant rouse the sensibility, but not necessarily 
the physical firmness of the penis. The male and 
female sexual organs are only the instruments of 
sensation, in the same manner as the eye is the in- 
strument of vision, while perception is resident truly 
in the brain. Observing the changes which occur 
at puberty, we find the voice becomes altered and 
discordant, and besides the uterine irritation in the 
budding woman, there is often, at this period, and 
never in childhood, a choking sensation in the throat, 
termed by Physicians " Globus Hystericus." Now 
the most intense cases of both kinds are found to be 
invariably associated with large development of the 
inferior and posterior part of the head, corresponding 
with the nervous mass contained within ; the change 
from boyhood or girlhood to adolescence, being, in 
less excitable temperaments, unmarked by any deci- 
sive indications of a superadded instinct. It is 
necessary to add, in connection with this, that the 
vocal nerves, those delicate threads which establish 
a communication between the brain and the muscles 
of the voice, originate near the cerebellum ; and 
when this organ is under extraordinary excitement, 
as at the period to which we refer, the neighbouring 



70 The Anatomy and 

parts and the nerves which emanate from them, are 
also liable to be affected from sympathy. So those 
miserable wretches, who in infancy have been de- 
prived of their testicles, for the sake of preserving 
a boyish counter-tenor voice, are liable to periodical 
excitement of the sexual feeling, but from deficiency 
of the instrument, the sensation cannot be gratified 
in the natural way. We have said that hanging 
produces erection. This is an established fact. 
There was one, w r hose case is recorded, who had 
recourse to partial strangulation to produce for him- 
self the effects for desire ; he tried the experiment 
once too often, and became the subject of inquiry 
before a coroner's jury ; such are the mad operations 
of sensualism ; but he had been castrated in child- 
hood, and accidently made out this inlet to a new 
pleasure. Erection also occurs in criminals at the 
moment of death on the scaffold, and to suppose that 
at such an awful moment sexual intercourse is pre- 
sent in the fancy, is absurd. Women menstruate 
under similar circumstances. This excitement then 
of the genital organ, this erection, is undoubtedly 
involuntary, and dependent on that gorged state of 
the vessels of the cerebellum which accompanies 
such interruption of the circulation as would arise 
from suspension of a cord, with pressure on the 
blood vessels of the neck, without laceration of the 
spinal marrow. 

These remarks are of the utmost practical impor- 
tance. We are forced upon the inquiry, whether 
there is not a necessity and invariable connection 
between the prevalency of certain forms of sen- 
sualism, and an absolutely diseased state of the 
brain ; we feel the truth of that doctrine which 



Physiology of the Sexual Organs. 71 

teaches, that this morbid unnaturally inflamed ap- 
petite may stand in close relation to insanity, pass- 
ing on b^ repeated indulgence to a state of the brain 
from ivhich recovery is almost hopeless. We are 
admonished that our curative energies must be di- 
rected (with widely different views from the mere 
routine practitioner) to the organs within the head, 
in our attempt to eradicate the causes and conse- 
quences of that excitement, ordinarily supposed to 
be resident exclusively in the genital organs. 

The male organ is most curiously complex. Mem- 
branous and vascular erectile, provided with several 
muscles, and forming the excretory canal, alike 
for the urinary and seminal fluids. The various 
structures which enter its composition may be 
defined, as the skin (with that prolongation form- 
ing the foreskin or prepuse ) cellular membrane, the 
cavernous cells, the urethra or urinary canal, a sus- 
pensary ligament, the glands/certain muscles, blood 
vessels and important nerves. Of the skin covering 
the penis, it is unnecessary to remark further, that 
in some forms of syphilitic disease, the internal 
lining of the foreskin becomes the subject of ulcer- 
ation, and one of the most painful consequences of 
gonorrhoea or clap, is that inflammatory enlargement 
and constriction produced by the sympathetic irrita- 
tion of the skin, know T n as paraphimosis, a state of 
parts, often engendered by the improper treatment 
of originally mild and simple affection. The agony 
of some patients under this distressing evil is most 
excruciating. 

The cavernous cells or bodies separated by a 
central fibrous plate or division, form almost the en- 
tire bulk of the body of the penis. They enclose the 



72 The Anatomy and 

upper surface of the urinary canal. At one extremity 
they are attached to the os pubis, or share bone, at 
the other they terminate at the nut or gland. 
The tissue of which these bodies is composed is 
spongy, cellular, and invested with strong fibrous 
encasement. Blood vessels are sent in profusion to 
this erectile structure, they interlace freely with 
each other, the veins following the same course as 
the arteries. 

The urethra is a most delicate and important 
structure, and a knowledge of its anatomical peculi- 
arities, and course is absolutely essential to a just 
adaptation of surgical remedies when in a state of 
disease. Its lining mucous membrane may be in- 
flamed either from common or specific irritation, its 
course may be obstructed by preternatural thickening 
of its investing structure. Indeed some of the most 
serious diseases infesting humanity, arise from the 
deviations from a healthy condition frequently ob- 
servable in this important canal. We find that the 
internal lining of the urethra is formed by a continu- 
ation of that mucous membrane which lines the 
bladder. This internal lining is of an exceedingly 
delicate texture. It is surrounded by a set of ves- 
sels, the coats of which are so thin that they are not 
visible except when injected or filled with blood. 
These vessels, which are of a very peculiar character, 
are continued onwards and forwards to the glands. 
When the anterior part of this canal is laid open, we 
may observe, that its lining membrane secretes, na- 
turally, a peculiar mucous fluid, and that there are 
minute cells which open by mouths, resembling dot- 
ted points upon the surface, which fulfil the same 
indication. Near the extremity of the penis there is 



Physiology of the Sexual Organs. 73 

^ne large cell or " Lacuna" which it is important tp 
recollect, as it is sufficiently large to. receive the 
point of a small bougie, and lower down there are 
two others, which though not so large are still as 
important in another point of view, for they are the 
openings of ihe ducts leading to certain secretory 
glands, very liable in some cases to disease. 

It is possible to trace the lining mucous membrane 
of the urethra as continuous, not only along that 
canal, but forming the whole of the inner surface of 
the bladder, lining the ureters, those canals leading 
from that cavity to the kidneys ; besides which it 
may be traced in another direction, from the urethra 
along the seminal ducts, and through the convoluted 
tubes of the testicle ; and again we may follow it as 
forming the inner coat of the vesiculce seminales, or 
those receptacles into which (ready for emission) the 
.seminal fluid is poured, as it is slowly, yet continu- 
ally, secreted by the testicles. 

Some parts of the urinary canal are more dilata- 
ble than others, the orifice is the least dilatable,* and 
as it is the narrowest part of the whole canal, if a 
bougie enter it readily it will assuredly pass into the 
bladder, unless there be diseased contraction along 
its course. About three quarters of an inch below 
the orifice the canal becomes a little longer, and 
there is situated the " Lacuna" already alluded to, 
as yielding the greater part of the healthy or diseased 
secretion which bedews its inner surface. The next 
four inches are nearly of equal diameter ; and now, 
presently, we arrive at that portion of the urethra, 
termed by anatomists, " the membranous portion" 

* See my work on " Strictures of the Urethra." 
7 



74 The Anatomy and 

Here we find it suddenly becoming much narrower, 
in consequence of its being surrounded by a neat 
circular band, descending from a transverse ligament, 
which unites these soft structures with the bony 
skeleton, and this is the situation in which stricture is 
most apt to occur. Passing onward to the bladder, 
the urethra is surrounded by the prostate gland, an 
organ of some size, of a peculiar and very compact 
texture, and which is frequently, in advanced life, the 
subject of disease. As its name implies, it stands 
before the bladder, surrounding that portion of the 
urinary canal which passes through it } so that the 
male urethra is the common outlet of three distinct 
fluids : the semen, the secretion of the prostate 
gland, and the urine ; to say nothing of the mucous 
which lubricates the lining of this canal ) the semen 
is never discharged pure, but mixed with the pros* 
tate fluid, which is thinner, more glairy, and less 
gelatinous. 

It remains next, that we detail so much of the 
surgical anatomy of the testicle as may enable the 
reader to comprehend the nature of some of its 
more obvious diseases. Our attention has been di- 
rected to the organs which excrete the seminal fluid, 
and if their healthy and sound condition be essential 
to the due performance of the duties of conjugal life, 
how much more important that the structures, which 
elaborate and separate from the blood the vivifying 
semen, should not have suffered from the irregulari- 
ties of sensualism, or mismanagement under disease. 
The secretion of sexual fluid is intended by nature 
for the conservation of the species. Though the 
male genitals rapidly develope from the fourteenth 
to the eighteenth year ; yet they do not in general 



Physiology of the Sexual Organs. 75 

acquire their complete growth or functions before 
the twentieth, sometimes not until the thirtieth ; and 
whether later or earlier, this is the proper period for 
marriage. It is certain that the body of man is not 
fully developed before the twenty-first year of age ; 
the spermatic fluid is less abundant, less fitted for 
reproduction ; and persons under this age generally 
beget delicate sickly infants, ivho seldom arrive at 
maturity ; sexual indulgence, or unnatural excite- 
ment from solitary practices, before the age of twen- 
ty-one, according to the laws of nature, not only 
retards the dev elopement of the genital organs, but 
of the whole body, impairs the strength, injures the 
constitution, and shortens life. 

The testicles, of which we now speak, are not origin- 
ally suspended in the scrotum or purse. Before birth 
they are placed in a very different part, and the na- 
ture and successive changes of their situation, have 
arrested the curiosity of the physiologist, and the 
attention of the surgeon, in all ages. The remark- 
able and perfectly natural passage of the testicles 
before birth, from the loins to the groin, and forwards 
to its appropriate situation, generally occurs during 
the last month of pregnancy. I have, however, seen 
it delayed, and sometimes this descent of the testi- 
cles is deferred even until the changing voice pro- 
claims approaching manhood. I recollect seeing a 
case where, from ignorance of these anatomical facts, 
a surgeon had actually directed a youth to the house 
of a surgical instrument maker, to ask for a double 
truss, under the impression, that the small enlarge^ 
ments visible in each groin were protrusions of bowel, 
when in truth, nature, somewhat tardy in her opera- 
tions, was about effecting the descent of the testicles 



T6 The Anatomy and 

into their ordinary resceptacle. Fortunately, in this 
instance, the intelligent dealer in trusses detected the 
real nature of the case ; had it been otherwise, the 
youth would, doubtlessly, have been maimed and 
impotent for life, from the pressure of the pad of 
the truss upon this exquisitely delicate organ. 

It is well known, that the testicles may not descend 
into the scrotum, though they may be fully developed 
in the loins, and perform their functions perfectly, in- 
deed, according to some writers, much better than 
in the natural situation, from the warm situation 
which they occupy, but this is questionable. I was 
once consulted by a young gentleman who had but 
one testicle, in the usual situation, as to the propriety 
of his contracting marriage ; the other testicle had 
never descended, and he was otherwise well deve- 
loped, robust and healthy. I advised him to marry, 
he did so, and became a parent. 

Similar incidents have occurred in the practice of 
others. So the destruction of one testicle by cas- 
tration or disease, is no impediment to procreation, 
no more than the loss of one eye is to vision. But 
when both testicles are completely diseased, or where 
alternately, from repeated attacks of clap, each of 
these organs becomes in turn inflamed and enlarged, 
the utmost care, and the most scientifically cautious 
management is demanded, lest the future power of 
secretion be materially diminished, or absolutely 
destroyed. The slightest reflection upon the struc- 
ture of the testicle, will serve to convince the reader, 
that it is, in truth, wonderful, that inflammatory 
swelling does not more frequently disorganize, 
thicken, and obliterate, the delicate and curiously 
contorted tubes, of which its substance is composed, 



Physiology of the Sexual Organs. 77 

than is really the case. The testicle then, is of an 
oval form, and of the size of a pigeon's egg ; it is a 
little flattened on the sides. It hangs in the scrotum 
by the spermatic cord, which is, in truth, nothing 
more than the excretory canal leading from the testi- 
cle to the urinary passage, the artery or blood vessel 
destined for the nutriment of the testicle, some nerves 
and veins, so constituting by their approximation, a 
species of soft string, occasionally the subject of dis- 
ease. As to the semen itself, it is eliminated by the 
testicles, and separated from the blood carried thither 
by the arteries of the cord. As to the course of the 
semen, we find it passing first upwards, along the 
vas deferens, or lengthened canal, leading from the 
point of its formation, then deeply downwards and 
backwards, to the termination of this canal on either 
side, in the urinary passage. 

It is undoubtedly true, that the thinner parts, dis- 
tending the vesiculce seminales, or seminal 4 recepta- 
cles, becomes absorbed into the living mass of cir- 
culating blood, a fact which furnishes strong collateral 
evidence of the vitality of the semen itself, for how 
otherwise were it possible to effect absolute union 
between a living fluid and a dead inert excretion ? 
The gelatinous residuum contained in these cells is 
rendered thereby more acrid and stimulating, provok- 
ing the natural desire ; and when in this way nature 
herself solicits the sexual act, as a relief to the dis- 
tended receptacles, there can be no doubt, that, as 
Sanctorius observes, moderate coition is good, but 
when it is solicited by the imagination it weakens 
all the faculties and particularly the memory. Nor 
is this difficult of explanation : when the vesiculce 
seminales are replete with a secretion, that by the 

7* 



78 The Anatomy and 

loss of its more fluid parts, has acquired a certain 
degree of consistency, rendering its entire return 
into the circulation difficult, if not impossible, and 
when, under these circumstances, evacuation fol- 
lows, we may be assured that the body will not 
thereby become debilitated. The act of evacuation 
(however induced) is more pernicious as it is unne- 
cessary, and because the masturbator has the power 
of exciting these organs, to excrete a thin fluid, when 
the seminal vesicles contain nothing sufficiently sti- 
mulating to rouse the erection necessary for the 
natural sexual act, he is able to perpetrate so much 
the greater mischief. Unaccustomed to retain the 
semen, the vesicles become irritable to the last ex- 
tent, and as the result, if the poor victim of solitary 
indulgence marry, the thin gleety fluid formed by his 
seminal organs, is unproductive, and unfit to impreg- 
nate a perfectly healthy female. As to such cha- 
racters, it is imagination, habit, not nature, that 
importune them. They drain the system of that 
which these receptacles are not naturally too irrita- 
ble to retain, of that which is necessary, or which, 
if superabundant, seeks the usual outlet at irregular 
and uncertain periods. Among the many lamenta- 
ble diseases, to which the human body is liable, few 
require greater skill and attention, on the part of the 
surgeon, than those Which affect the urinary and 
generative organs. On the due performance of their 
functions depend, in a great degree, the comfort and 
health of the individual. It is obvious, that whatever 
deranges them, must be the source of various con- 
stitutional disorders, and often of death, after long 
protracted and sevete sufferings. 

Our observations upon the surgical anatomy of 



Physiology of the Sexual Organs. 79 

the female reproductive organs will necessarily be 
limited,* inasmuch as the same elementary princi- 
ples apply to the treatment of sexual diseases, whe- 
ther the subject be of our own or of the weaker sex. 
For instance, all that relates to the diseases of the 
lining mucous membrane of the male urethra, is 
generally true of similar affections incidental to wo- 
man ; and in the same way, as organized secreting 
structures, endued with identity of operation, are 
found in both ; so disease produces analogous effects 
and requires analogous remedies. A minute and 
detailed anatomical enumeration is, therefore, to 
avoid repetition, absolutely unnecessary. 

The general character of the sexes are marked 
and obvious, and there is little doubt but that this 
variety of organization and external character, is to 
be referred to the influence which the generative 
organs exert over the rest of the body. If it be 
true that ''propter solum ulerem mulier est, id 
quod est ;" that is, it is in consequence of the womb 
only, that woman is what she is ; it is equally true 
of ourselves. Do we not know that the early re- 
moval of the male sexual organs retards the growth, 
and stamps upon man the worse than womanish 
effeminacy and voice of boyhood ? 

It has been held by some physiologists, that the 
generative organs of the human female are more 
complicated than those of the male, and that there- 
fore the causes of impotence and sterility are more 
numerous and less apparent than in man. And so it 
is, that if a married pair be devoid of offspring, the 

* For further exp'anation on this subject see Fawcett's work on 
Ftrnale Complaints. 



80 The Anatomy and 

female is most commonly and often erroneously sup- 
posed to be the inefficient party. 

However if we examine the genital organs of both 
sexes anatomically, we shall find that if complicated 
they are both equally so, possessing equal adaptation 
or arrangement of parts, as well as identity of struc- 
ture. We may urge the truth of this position without 
pledging ourselves to the literal correctness of the 
opinion advanced by Aristotle, and revived by some 
in our day, namely, that the only difference existing 
between the genital system of the male and that of 
the female, consists in this — that the one is placed 
internally and'the other external to the body. How- 
ever near these coincidences may appear, we should 
be far from maintaining the doctrine of a perfect 
similitude between the genital apparatus of both 
sexes ; each of them performs functions perfectly 
distinct, though reciprocally essential in the act of 
reproduction. 

Of the external female genitals it is only requisite 
to remark, that their internal surfaces are naturally 
intended to be placed in contact ; and to answer this 
intention, as well as for other important uses, we 
find them invested or lined with a delicate prolonga- 
tion of mucous membrane, precisely similar in its 
pathological relations, to the jnucous membrane 
which forms the internal layer of the male urethra. 
Hence it is liable to the same diseases. It is upon 
this surface that the inflammation of gonorrhoea or 
clap excites its baneful influence. Free and copious 
suppuration is the method whereby the inflamed 
vessels relieve themselves, and this being secreted in 
quantity, and possessing most infectious and acrimo- 
nious qualities, if coition takes place under these 



Physiology of the Sexual Organs. 81 

circumstances, a similar disease is engendered in the 
male, obviously because of the identity of structure 
in the investing mucous membrane common to both. 
Connected with the cavity of the uterus, there are 
two delicate canals, called from the anatomist who 
first correctly described them, "The Fallopian tubes." 
These are narrow and tortuous, opening by one ex- 
tremity into the womb, and terminating at the other 
end in a fringe-like aperture, peculiar and elegant in 
structure. These canals are of great importance in 
conception, since they appear to become tinged as 
well as the tubes themselves, during the excitement 
of coition, and to embrace the " ovaria" over which 
they lie. These " ovaria" or as thev were once 
termed the testes of the female, are composed of a 
tough and almost tendinous covering, and a dense 
and closely compacted cellular substance, containing 
in each ovarium about fifteen ovula, or rudiments of 
egg; in fact drops of albuminous, yellowish fluid, 
which coagulates like fine white of egg, if the recent 
ovarium be plunged into boiling water. The analo- 
gy between the female ovaria and the male testicles 
is not fanciful. The ovaria receive the same blood 
vessels and nerves, as in the male go to the testicle. 
it has even the form of this organ, though flatter, and 
perhaps smaller. 

It would appear that a mere albuminous, coagula- 
ble drop, is all that the female contributes in the 
work of conception ; and it is probable that, from 
the analogy of the vegetable system, during the 
adult state, these drops become mature in succes- 
sion ; so that they, one by one, force their way> 
whether impregnated or no, finally burst their cover- 
ing, are transmitted along the fallopian tube, to bs 



82 The Anatomy and Physiology, §c. 

involved into perfect humanity, or discharged with 
the next menstrual evacuation. The fluid called 
" female semen," supposed to be contributed during 
the conjugal act, is nothing more than the mucous 
secretion of the lining membrane of the genitals, 
suddenly augmented in quantity by the pleasurable 
irritation of those organs, and of course it contributes 
nothing to the work of reproduction. 

The ingenuity and research of man has been 
vainly, but not perhaps unprofitably excited, in the 
attempt to unravel the mysterious process of con- 
ception. The genital organs of both sexes have 
acquired perfect development, are excited by the 
animal secretion cf the germ, or egg, in the ovary in 
woman. This excitement leads to sexual union, by 
which the elements of both sexes are united, and a 
new being is the result of such contact. Compara- 
tive researches on the production of plants and ani- 
mals, from the highest to the lowest classes, have 
signally failed in explaining the mystery of human 
reproduction. Life and organization are neither 
inseparable nor even identical. After the investiga- 
tion of ages, the reference must be for explanation 
to the Creator of all things. Man is still ignorant 
of how life begins or ceases ; it is all mystery to 
him. We see the instrument, and can perhaps ex- 
plain the structure of the keys and finger-board, but 
the hidden strings that produce the harmony are past 
the ken of mortal vision, 



CHAPTER VI. 

Of Self-pollution and its Consequences* 

The crimes ofEv and Onan, were committed un- 
der the full consciousness of their inherent hateful- 
ness. Sin and suffering are essentially inseparable. 
Its present and immediate consequences are often 
visibly severe ; such is the ordination of the Moral 
Governor. His rational and intelligent creatures are 
responsible to Him for the use or abuse of those 
bodily powers, with which, for the wisest of pur- 
poses he has endued them. We find, that apart from 
the death of the soul, Er and Onan were instantly 
destroyed.* They dared to disarrange, to perfect 
the laws, impressed alike upon the conscience as 
upon the bodily organization of man. Theirs was 
presumptuous criminality, not ignorant frailty, but 
wilful impiety ; and their sad example has been left 
on record as a fearful warning to all future genera- 
tions, as equally the measure of the purity and holi- 
ness of the Divine Nature, the abhorrent depravity of 
human transgression, and the inevitable certainty of 
retributive justice. 

* " And Onan knew that the seed should not be his, and it 
came to pass, when he went unto his brother's wife, that he spilt 
it on the ground^ lest that he should give seed to his brother. 

And the thing which he did displeased the Lord, wherefore he 
slew him also." — Genesis, 38th chap., 9th and 10th verses. 



B4 Self -pollution and 

It is frequently urged, that the destructive habit 
now under consideration, is essentially distinct from 
the species of wickedness which forms the special 
subject of historic reference in the sacred records, 
and that, therefore, the term " Onanism, " however 
generally applied or understood, is incorrect. A 
little reflection will enable us to perceive, that the 
popular designation is radically consistent with truth. 
The endeavours or designs of preventing pro-crea- 
tion, were the crimes for which Er and Onan so 
miserably and signally perished ; they were instantly 
consigned to temporal and eternal death for their 
presumption, in not complying with the command of 
God; their offences being, negatively, murder, by 
preventing that increase which was an absolute com- 
mand given in Adam to all posterity. And what, in 
effect, is the difference between their criminality and 
that of the secret victim of self-pollution ? Is not 
complete impotence the frequent result of the prac- 
tice ? Are not the intentions of marriage as com- 
pletely frustrated ? Nay, what is worse, as self- 
destruction is, of every species of murder, the most 
horribly vile, do not these entail upon themselves, 
while life rapidly wasts away, a worse than living 
death ; do they not dig for themselves untimely 
graves, and abreviate the term of their own exist- 
ence, by this unnatural, inexcusable sin ? We trust 
we shall be able, most clearly, to establish these im- 
portant positions, and to trace the immediate connec- 
tion as cause and effect, between the profuse waste 
of the seminal fluid ; together with the inordinate 
excitement of the genital organs, and some of the 
direst forms of disease that infest the suffering 
frame. 



its Consequences. 85 

Self-pollution is that detestable practice by which 
persons of either sex may defile their own bodies 
alone in secrecy, and whilst yielding to lascivious 
imaginations, they endeavour to imitate and procure 
to themselves, that sensation which nature has 
appended to the commerce of the sexes. It appears 
to be one of those impure habits which is coeval 
with the world's history* It was the special vice of 
Pagan Rome. Temples were erected to Venus 
Fricatrix* in which the most obscene practices, of 
which self-pollution constituted one, were publicly 
perpetrated. The Friga, or Venus of the ruder 
Scandinavians was honoured with the same vile ob- 
servances ; and from this curious, yet filthy source, 
we derive the name " Friga-daeg," of the sixth 
day of the week. A word in vulgar use, expressive 
of the sexual act, has the same dishonorable origin. 

Unfortunately for the history of human nature, 
it has been found coeval with every form of society, 
savage or civilized, and the denunciations of the 
ancient moralists are of equal application at the 
present period. We find them uniformly expressing 
the most unmitigated horror at this abominable prac- 
tice, as a crime most monstrous, unnatural, and 
filthy ; odious to extremity ; its guilt crying, and its 
consequences absolutely ruinous ; as destroying 
conjugal affection, perverting natural inclination^ 
and extinguishing the hope of posterity. " Increase 
and multiply" is the scriptural text, " Plant trees and 
beget offspring" is the apothegm of the Magi. The 
perpetuation of the species being, with the Great 
Designer of the Universe, an object of the first in- 

* From the Latin Verb u Frico," to rub or chafe — friction. 
8 



SB Self -pollution and 

terest, all living beings are mentally and physically 
formed with a view to this great end. With what 
encouragement to virtue, therefore, (says a certain 
author) may young people behold a man at the age 
of four score, with a wife of the like antiquity, both 
blest with healthy hale constitutions, and fresh 
wholesome countenances, with sound minds and 
perfect senses, active limbs and of cheerful tempers, 
presiding over a healthy progeny, perhaps to the 
third or fourth generation, and all these blessings 
owing, under Providence, to their temperance and 
continence; where, if we turn our eyes upon the 
licentious masturbators, we shall find them with me- 
gre jaws, pale looks, feeble hands and legs without 
calves ; their generative faculties weakened, if not 
destroyed, in the prime of their youth, a jest to 
others, and a torment to themselves. 

Let it not be urged, that commentaries upon the 
evils produced by solitary vice, may be so perverted 
as to teach the practices we professedly condemn. 
This is specious yet fallacious reasoning. Indivi- 
dual perversion is no argument against the general 
knowledge of necessary truth. There are youths, 
unfortunately, of dispositions so depraved, that they 
will turn over the pages of Holy Writ, for the sake 
of gloating over those darker, yet severely faithful 
transcripts of human frailty, which have been left on 
record as monitory proofs of dependence on heaven 
in the hour of need ; yet, surely, this forms no argu- 
ment against the divinity, or authority and perusal of 
the sacred book. To those that will have the effron- 
tery to assume, that works of this nature tend more to 
promote vice than to suppress it, and those who were 
before ignorant -of it will hereby acquire a know- 



its Consequences. 87 

ledge of bad habits, it is only necessary to observe, 
that the best and purest things are invariably selected 
by depraved minds to be polluted and distorted, 
agreeably to a previously corrupt imagination. To 
such is nothing pure, their touch is contamination, 
their look defilement. No new development of vice 
can render them more essentially odious, there is an 
"internal spring of pollution which petrifies alike all 
that comes within its influence, whether it be the 
word of God, or the language of man; they are 
already past my solicitude. It is, however, the wish 
of the Author that this publication may become ex- 
tensively familiar to the superintendents of our 
schools and collegiate educational institutions. To 
the clergy, to parents and guardians, and all to whom 
is entrusted the formation of youthful character. 
It will be useful without admixture or diminution, in 
enabling them to make timely discovery of this hate- 
ful practice, among those committed to their care ; 
and it may put them upon their guard, so as to 
^enable them to take such precautions as may be 
most fitting to avert the consequences. 

There are few of those who have devoted themselves 
exclusively to the treatment of sexual diseases who 
are not deeply impressed with the general prevalency 
of self-pollution. It is is doubted by the mere rou- 
tine practitioner — it is denied ! He of all men is 
least likely to be able to form an accurate concep- 
tion. He is precisely the last man to be consulted, 
or confided with the secret. The family physician 
may be in possession of family secrets, he may 
know the hereditary tendencies common to them all, 
but it is quite another thing to become entrusted 
with individual secrets, the confession that the soli- 



88 Self -pollution and 

tary victim will not, and cannot make, to a father, 
mother, a brother or a sister.. The common medi- 
cal attendant is never consulted,, and very wisely so, 
he is just as ignorant of the extent and pre valency 
of these pernicious practices as he is of the best 
mode for their detection and cure. I am sure that 
in calling attention to the evils resulting from 
every form of vicious indulgence, I am adopt- 
ing the most efficient means to deter the unwary 
young from the snare ; and by pointing out to per- 
sons of both sexes the frightful evils, both to body 
and mind, inseparably attendant upon the grosser 
habit of self-pollution. I hold the warning becon 
up to nature, and mark the treacherous quicksand 
upon which have been wrecked the hopes and pro- 
mise of many a noble youth, now mouldering in a 
disgraceful grave.* Temporary distraction may 
suddenly dethrone the self-determining power of the 
will, life may become extent under the influence of 
momentary madness ; but the poor slave of filthy 
propensities is a deliberate suicide ; and, shall it be 
said, it is wrong to strip the mask of this infatuation — 
to paint the horrors which await the unfortunate 
creatures who venture near the edge of a moral 
gulf, indiscriminately burying within its insatiable 
vortex, the happiness of time and the hope for Eter- 
nity ? There crawls not upon the face of the earth a 
more truly miserable wretch than the victim of unbri- 
dled licentiousness. His imagination is on fire,burning 
with filthy unnatural glow. His bodily organs have 
been taxed to the utmost. Weary and jaded, they 
refuse to obey the stimulus of that never-slumber- 

* See " The Bachelor's Guide." 



its Consequences. 88 

ing depravity which goads his fancy in ihe darkness 
of night, in the dreams of his broken rest, and in 
the worse than dreamy abstractions of the cheerless 
day. He is tormented with desires he can never 
gratify — he is baffled in every attempt to taste the 
sweet enjoyments accorded only to virtuous modera- 
tion. Like the fabled Tantalus of old, thirst is con- 
suming him, unmitigated by every attempt to force, 
for a moment, his mouth below the wave. The 
vulture retribution is preying upon his vitals. Let the 
thoughtless, inconsiderate youth, who in some un- 
guarded moment may have been seduced into the 
commission of this criminality, but who, as yet, is 
scarcely able to perceive its ill results ; or, if con- 
scious of suffering, incorrectly ascribes it to any 
source but his newly acquired habit — let him not 
imagine that the same joyous flow of vivacity will 
continue to attend him as now — let him not presume 
upon his vigour, and rejoice in his seemingly ex- 
haustless powers. I do not overcharge the miseries 
of sensualism ; its results are as hideous as they 
are inevitable. Self-pollution is the most certain, 
though not always the most immediate and direct 
avenue to destruction. It constitutes a lingering 
species of mortality, and if it were possible to study 
and invent refinement in cruelty, surely that would 
most dearly deserve the designation, which a man 
deliberately points against himself — against not 
merely his temporal but his eternal welfare, not by 
sudden wrench, to tear himself away from the ameni- 
ties of wife, children, and home, but with his own 
hand, imperceptibly, to infuse a deadly poison, slowly 
to rankle in the cup of life, and imbitter each passr 
ing day ; to shroud in gloom the darkening future 

8* 



90 Belf-pollutian and 

and invite the king, of terrors, prematurely, to do 
his office. 

It will be proper to notice a few of the more 
direct consequences of the habit of Self-pollution. 
It is chiefly on the youth of both sexes that its 
ravages are observable ; death mostly removes in 
silence those who persist in the practice, in complete 
manhood* That this should constitute a vice of 
youth is excessively to be deplored ; inasmuch as 
we find the springs of life contaminated and enfee- 
bled at the outset, and the transmitted vitality of a 
succeeding progeny is sure to manifest corresponding 
imbecility, puny growth and tendency to disease. 
Whether from the prevalency of self-pollution, or 
excessive indulgence in sexual commerce, so far as 
the loss of the vitalizing fluid is concerned, people 
now leave off: at the period when a rational man i& 
only beginning to develope his powers. An aged 
gentleman, a resident of this city, now long past the 
allotted age of man, became a parent very lately, of 
a new and healthy progeny ; and in every such in- 
stance, the early habits have been temperate, hardy, 
and sparing, of sensual indulgence. The youth of 
the present day act as if they imagined they could 
never soon enough get rid of their chastity, that 
there is something manly in the success of their ex-, 
ploits, not in the camp of Mars, but in the silken 
tent of Venus. Long before their bodies are com- 
pletely finished, they begin to waste those powers 
which are destined for giving life to others ; the con- 
sequences are evident— they feel nothing but dejec- 
tion and misery, and a stimulus of the utmost import- 
ance, as the seasoning of life's feast is lost to them for 
ever. To those who devote their time to the relief 



its Consequences. 91 

of such, how many of these debilitated and emaci- 
ated objects do not daily present themselves ? the 
countenance sunk, the eyes pallid, an indescriba- 
ble character of feature, better known than expres- 
sed ; the recipients of much sympathy from the 
friends who know not the cause of their apparently 
consumptive, yet gradual decline ; and all ascriba- 
ble to this abominable, yet seductive, practice of 
masturbation. An idea may be formed of the nature 
of this loss, and of the sacred guard which health 
imposes on its due preservation, by observing the 
consequences resulting from its unnecessary, invo- 
luntary, or too frequent evacuation. Physicians of 
all ages have been unanimously of opinion, 
that the loss of one ounce of this fluid, by the unna- 
tural act of Self -pollution, or nocturnal emissions, 
weakens the system more completely than the ab- 
straction of forty ounces of blood. Hippocrates 
observed ; that " the seed of man arose from all the 
humours of his body, and is the most valuable part 
of them." When a person loses his seed, (he says 
in another place,) he loses his vital spirit ; so that 
it is not astonishing, that its too frequent evacuation 
should emaciate, as the body is thereby deprived of 
the purest of its humours. Another author remarks, 
that " the semen is kept in the seed vessels until the 
man makes proper use of it, or nocturnal emissions 
deprive him of it." During all this time the quantity 
which is there detained excites him to the act of 
venery; but the greatest part of this seed, which is 
the most volatile and odoriferous, as well as the 
strongest, is absorbed into the blood ; and it there 
produces, upon its return, very surprising changes ; 
it makes the beard, hair and nails grow, it changes 



92 Self-pollution and 

the voice and manners, for age does not produce 
these changes in animals, it is the seed only that 
operates in this manner, for these changes are never 
met with in Eunuchs, or those who have been de- 
prived of their testicles. Can a greater proof of its 
vitalizing power be shown than this fact, " that one 
single drop is sufficient (under proper circumstan- 
ces) to give life to afutiwe being. Those then who 
waste this precious fluid are truly wretched — dis- 
abled from rendering any service either to themselves 
or their friends, they drag on a life totally useless to 
others and a burthen to themselves, in the midst of 
that society, which, if it could know, would despise 
rather than pity them for their self-inflicted sufferings. 
The moralist and legislator will do well in estima- 
ting the sources of human wretchedness, intellectual 
perversity and crime, to take into account those 
habits which tend, not more to enfeeble the physical 
constitution of man, than to demoralize his springs 
of action. 

The undue loss of seminal secretion in a natural 
w 7 ay, that is from too frequent intercourse with the 
other sex, is productive of dire evils, but w 7 hen re- 
sulting from self-pollution, no language can describe 
the extent of those sufferings, which violated nature 
is compelled to endure. All the intellectual facul- 
ties are weakened, the man becomes a coward, ap- 
prehensive of a thousand ideal dangers, or sinks into 
the effeminate timidity of womanhood ; he becomes 
truly hysterical, sighs or weeps upon the slightest 
insult, or want of sympathy with his hypochondriacal 
sensations ; such a one commences the career of 
incipient manhood by the abuse of nature's most 
secret and sacred functions, and that at a moment 



its Consequences. 93 

when the system is incompletely formed, when 
energy and passion need as yet the controling rule 
of riper reason. Exclusively absorbed by this prin- 
ciple, all the powers of the body and mind are 
wasted in delusive enjoyments, in imaginary crea- 
tions, and an age of care and anxiety follows, broken 
only by useless and unavailing regrets. Under the 
various forms of the peculiar excitement, but espe- 
cially in the diseased fancy of the victim of solitary 
vice, we find associated every species of morbid 
insensibility, erratic imaginations, and their conse- 
quent results, are indicated by an indecision of cha- 
racter difficult of comprehension by those who are 
unacquainted with its cause. Waywardness, stub- 
born self-love, selfishness, in every modification, or 
that form of it which requires, and would attract, the 
anxiety and attention of others too exclusively upon 
himself; such are often the mental outlines of a 
character which secretly debasing passions have 
contributed to form. A.n incessant irksome uneasi- 
ness, continual anguish, or alternating with fits of 
unreasonable and childish merriment, depressed or 
excited without adequate cause ; these form some 
of the mental inquietudes connected with the prac- 
tice of masturbation. Loss of sleep, or inability to 
repose calmly until fairly wearied out, midnight 
watchfulness, and dull sluggish unrest upon waking, 
with troubles — frightful or lascivious dreams ; such 
is the history of the hours of darkness. The morn- 
ing comes, but not with returning day; the blithe 
song of the early lark, or the birds which chirp in 
the first beams of the summer sun ; mid-day passes 
gloomily away, the lazy victim of solitary vice re- 
quires much sleep, in some measure to atone for the 



94 Self -pollution and 

loss of power, and to recruit exhausted sensorial 
energy. Left to himself, he is often found at this 
hour still breathing the impure stifling atmosphere 
of his own chamber, on that bed from which he feels 
no cheerful alacrity to rise. An indefinable, muddy, 
dizzy oppression of brain haunts his waking hours, 
his brow is often contracted, and his look betrays, 
either the vacancy of his soul, or that his polluted 
mind is wandering after some indulgence that ima- 
gination has conjured up to his disordered fancy. 
He eats with avidity, sometimes ravenously ; for in 
this way only can the enormous drain upon the 
seminal fluid be partially supplied ; at length the 
nervous power, essential to the digestive process, 
begins to fail, then slow fever rapidly emaciates his 
wasting frame. Previously, even to this, we may 
note that the skin assumes that pale or violet hue 
easily cognizable by the practised observer, especi- 
ally around the eyes ; pimples appear on the face, 
of course defying for their removal the ordinary 
remedies, the powers of the body decay, the shortest 
effort to a sudden race, which once formed the ex- 
ulting display of youthful agility, is now followed 
by breathlessness and fainting ; the muscular sys- 
tem becoming strangely enfeebled, and wasting 
away. The arm that once could bear the savage 
grasp is now shrivelled, and the muscles of the thigh 
are shrunk within the ample folds of the dress they 
once distended with their voluminous rotundity. 
The body, once erect and stately, assumes the stoop 
of decrepitude ; the shoulders project forward, the 
step, formerly light, tripping and elastic, is now a 
miserable dragging shuffle ; or it is accidentally dis- 
covered that a walking stick is really something 



its Consequences. 95 

more than an elegant appendage. All his fire and 
spirit are deadened by this detestable vice ; he is 
like a faded rose, a tree blasted in its bloom, a wan- 
dering skeleton, nothing remains but debility, lan- 
guor, livid paleness, and a degraded soul. A youth, 
endowed by nature with talent and genius, becomes 
dull or totally stupid, the mind loses all relish for 
virtuous or exalted ideas, the consciousness of the 
purity and essential holiness of the Creator, oper- 
ates asa bar against any approach to him, or the 
appropriation of any of those consolations under 
suffering, which religion is destined to afford. The 
whole life of such a man is a continued succession 
of secret reproach, painful sensations arising from 
the consequences of having been the fabricator of 
his own distress ; irresolution, disgust of life, and 
not unfrequently self-murder. Nay, what in effect 
is this but the consummation of slow self-destruc- 
tion ? Could we but lift the veil of the grave, how 
should we startle at the long train of the victims of 
sensualism. 

A gentleman of high connections, and apparently 
possessed of every requisite to make life happy; 
was found most unexpectedly dead in his bed ; a 
pistol, the instrument of his death, was clenched in 
his hand ; none could account for the rash act, and 
doubtless, but for his own revelation, it would have 
passed away as unaccountable as the temporary 
insanity of the newspapers. Upon a piece of paper, 
in his own hand writing, was discovered, the words, 
'• / am impotent and unfit to live? Scarcely a day 
passes that deaths by suicide are not recorded, where 
no cause is assigned for the deed, but for which, 
from the result of experience, I am strongly inclined 



96 Self -pollution and 

to believe, could we explore the secrets of the 
gloomy prison-house, would be easily explained. 

Generative debility is not so unfrequent as many 
suppose ; it most frequently is the result of sensual 
excesses, and the mental agonies of such a one are 
almost insupportable. What bodily pain can equal 
the agony of the soul ? A wounded spirit who can 
bear ? Aggravated as those feelings must, of neces- 
sity be, by the consciousness that to his own impru- 
dence, his own base slavery to sensualism, he owes 
his forlorn, blighted, and miserable condition — a 
being on whom the eye of beauty beams not with 
fond and pure affection, an outcast even from the 
paid embraces of a mercenary wanton. 

There is in this class of patients an exquisite 
sensitiveness to external impressions, the slightest 
change of weather affects the sensualist most severe- 
ly ; he cannot perceive the correctness of the re- 
mark, that ours is a temperate climate, for with him 
the seasons are always in extremes ; the summer 
scorches him into lassitude, or he becomes peevish 
at the continuance of the cold. Such individuals 
are excessively 'prone to catarrhal affections, they 
take cold from trifling causes, their bodies becoming 
as keenly delicate to external and atmospheric agen- 
cies as the most perfect barometer. We find lhat 
in them the Kning mucous membrane of the nostrils 
and the eyes is peculiarly irritable,, fits of long-con- 
tinued sneezing annoy them on getting into a cold 
t>ed, or on the sudden approach of a strong light. 
The eyelids become strangely hot and irritable, at 
night the handkerchief is in frequent requisition, 
and a continual winking and pressure together of the 
lids is then observable. The most acute pains from 



its Consequences: 97 

another feature of the aggregate malady. These are 
sometimes referable to the head or limbs, but more 
commonly to the stomach, forming the index to that 
form of indigestion resulting from the drain of sen- 
sorial energy. Many mis-called rheumatic diseases 
are solely dependent upon this practice. The organs 
of generation participate also in the misery of local 
deprivation. It is a singular fact, that the habit of 
self-pollution is connected with an inevitable diminu- 
tion of the size of the penis. The author has had 
frequent occasions to verify this statement. Of noc- 
turnal emissions, seminal weakness, diseased testicle, 
and gleet, as the consequences of masttubation, we 
will speak separately. The diminution of the size 
of the penis is one of the first and most obvious 
effects of this bad habit. The virile organ becomes 
shrunk into less than half its former outline, and 
what is worse, the power of perfect erection is alto- 
gether destroyed. This is not wonderful, if we re- 
flect upon the diversity of operation between the 
natural sexual act, and the vile friction of the mas- 
turbator. With him, even if the seminal vesicles be 
not sufficiently distended with that natural stimulus 
which provokes erection, he can produce by friction 
.a higher degree of irritation than is natural, and he 
can command the sensation when it would be im- 
possible to maintain the requisite firmness of the 
organ for coition. Thus, then, a variety of evils are 
engendered. The testicles are called upon suddenly 
and violently to secrete, and the excretory canals to 
discharge a thin, effete, unprolific semen, and the 
nerves of the penis are rendered susceptible of an 
agreeable titillation, without the naturally inseparable 
adjunct — firm erection of that organ ; hence when 

9 



D8 Self -pollution and 

the masturbator tries to indulge in coition, he cannot 
assume the requisite solidity to effect penetration, 
or, if he partially effect an entrance into the vagina, 
it is followed by premature emission. The organs 
have been accustomed to a vicious perversion, to 
excrete without erection, or if the penis swell for a 
moment, the genitals of the female do not grasp the 
whole length of that organ, with the rude and forci- 
ble friction it has suffered from the human hand. 

I enter into these details for the purpose of prov- 
ing, if indeed it were necessary, that my statements 
of the consequences arising from self-pollution form 
no imaginary or over-charged picture, and that those 
results are susceptible of rational explanation. The 
reason why masturbators are debilitated more than 
those who indulge in natural sexual intercourse, is, 
that independently of the emission of the seed, the 
frequency of erection (though imperfect) with which 
they are afflicted greatly weakens them. Every 
part that is in a state of tension exhausts the powers, 
and they having none to lose, the spirits are con- 
veyed thither in greater quantities ; they are dissi- 
pated, and this occasions weakness ; they are want- 
ing in the performance of other functions which is 
thereby only imperfectly done. The concurrence of 
these two causes is attended by the most dangerous 
consequences. We may discover another difference 
between the victims of solitary vice and those who 
indulge in natural intercourse ; a difference that is 
totally to the disadvantage of the former, and which 
I have fully described in the " Bachelor's Guide." 
That joy which the heart is sensible of, and which 
should be nicely distinguished from that voluptuous- 
ness solely corporeal, which man enjoys in common 



its Consequences. 99 

with other animals, and from which it is completely- 
distinct; this joy aids digestion, animates circulation, 
accelerates all the functions, restores strength and 
supports it. If this be found united with the plea^ 
sures of love, it contributes to repair and restore 
what it stole by force, and observation proves it, 
Santorius remarked, " After excessive coition with 
a woman that is beloved, a man is not sensible of 
the lassitude which should follow this excess,because 
the joy which the soul feels increases the strength 
of the heart, favours the functions, and repairs what 
was lost." Upon this principle Venette maintains, 
that having correspondence with a handsome woman 
does not exhaust so much as with an ugly woman ; 
beauty has charms which dilate our hearts and mul- 
tiply our spirits, when we excite ourselves against 
the laws of nature, the crime is much greater on 
that side than on the other; and can it be questioned, 
that nature allots more joy to those pleasures pro- 
cured in her proper channals, than in those which 
are repugnant to her ? In the former case the loss 
is compensated by the gain ; in that of self-pollution, 
the masturbator loses all and receives nothing. These 
are a few of the most prominent of the immediate 
evils resulting from self pollution. That the danger- 
ous consequences of these acts are not immediately 
felt, does not prove that they never, will. I hesitate 
not to say, that in their mischievous progress, they 
are the heralds of every baneful vice. Nature, prin- 
ciple, and all correct feeling, are arrayed against the 
habit of self-pollution ; in its rolling demonology 
it allures, gradually, from one stage of degradation 
to another ; the painful impression it engenders is 
the source of unmanly pusillanimity, and an ab^nr 



100 Self -pollution and 

donmentof the essential position. Man, the rational 
and intelligent lord of creation, should maintain, as 
the head of that chain of animated being, which, 
though inferior, is certainly not invested with those 
depraved propensities. How fallen from the high 
and proud estate, how sunk beneath the true nobility 
of man, is the wretched wreck of humanity, whose 
deplorable excesses have reduced him to a condition 
so truly contemptible. Once in the joyous hilarity 
of youth he rejoiced in the entire command of every 
manly faculty, now a senseless, yet animated mass 
of helplessness, exciting the commiseration of those 
who know not the cause of his ruin, and visited by 
the bitter scorn of those who, spite of his attempt 
at concealment, read his degradation enstamped upon 
every feature. Whither may he fly from the plague 
that is within him, the evil that haunts him alike in 
darkness and light ? The quiet and refined enjoy- 
ments of literary research, once his harmless and 
delightful recreation, now pall up his morbid viti- 
ated taste, if he read at all, nothing but the more 
licentious productions of our older dramatists, or the 
lewd effusions of the reign of Charles II., proves 
sufficiently stimulating; or these, it may be, are ex- 
changed for the mawkish sentimentality, the prurient 
voluptuousness or concealed obscenity of alow cir- 
culating library of trashy novels. Forced to con- 
templete the gloomy spectre, the shadow of his 
former intellectual and bodily self. It is merciful 
indeed, that loss of memory, in some faint measure, 
procures for him, negatively, moments of repose 
from that murderous racking thought, which can 
dwell alone upon images the most horrific and revolt- 
ing. To such a one what misery arises from the 



-its Consequence? \ Z 101 

accidental perception of domestic enjoyments ; he 
sees a fond falher hug to his bosom his first-born, 
and cover its little laughing face with kisses. But 
for him — let fancy complete the picture. 

Of the serious constitutional diseases to which 
sensualism gives rise, we must speak more at large. 
The eloquent Tissot has arranged, under six distinct 
heads, the evils which arise from self-pollution, and 
his description accords precisely with my experience, 
during a practice of thirty years. He observes — 

First— "All the intellectual faculties are weakened, 
loss of memory ensues, the ideas are clouded, the 
patients sometimes fall into a slight madness ; they 
have an incessant irksome uneasiness, continued 
anguish, and so often a remorse of conscience that 
they frequently shed tears. They are subject to 
vertigoes ; all their senses, but particularly their 
sight and hearing, are weakened ; their sleep, if they 
can obtain any, is disturbed with frightful dreams." 

Secondly—" The powers of their bodies decay ; 
the growth of such as abandon themselves to these 
abominable practices, before it is accomplished, is 
greatly prevented ; some cannot sleep at all, others 
are in a perpetual state of drowsiness. They are 
affected with hypocondriac or hysterical complaints, 
and are overcome with the accidents that accompany 
those grievous disorders and faintings ; some emit a 
calcerous saliva ; coughs, slow fevers, and consump- 
tions, are chastisements which others meet, with 
their own crimes." 

Thirdly — " The most acute pains form another 
object of patients' complaints ; some are thus affected 
in their heads, others in their breasts, stomach and 
intestines ; others have external rheumatic pains, 

9* 



1 02 Self-pollution and 

aching numbness in all parts of their bodies, when 
they are slightly pressed." 

Forthly — " Pimples do not only appear in the face, 
(this is one of the most common symptoms) but ever 
suppurating blisters upon the nose, the breast, and 
the thighs ; and painful itchings in the same parts. 
One patient complained of fleshy excrescences upon 
his forehead." 

Fif I 1 y — •" The organs of generation also partici- 
pate of that misery, whereof they are the primary 
causes. Many patients are incapable of erection ; 
others discharge their seminal liquor upon the slight- 
est titulation and the most feeble erection, or the 
efforts they make when at stool. Many are effected 
with a constant gonorrhoea, which entirely destroys 
their powers, and the discharge resembles foeted 
matter or mucous ; others are tormented with pain- 
ful priapisms, dissuria 3 ,, stranguries, heat of the 
urine, and a difficulty in rendering it, which greatly 
torments many patients ; some have painful tumours 
upon their testicles, penis, bladder, and spermatic 
cord. In a word, either the impracticability of coi- 
tion, or any deprivation of the genital liquor, renders 
every one imbecile, who has for any length of time 
given way to this crime." 

Sixthly — -"The functions of the intestines are 
sometimes quite disordered ; and some patients com- 
plain of stubborn constipations ; others of the hce- 
morrhoids, or of the running of a foeted matter from 
the fundament." 

Such are the sufferings closely connected with 
the unnatural and perverted enjoyments of the sen- 
sualist ; altogether the reverse of that transporting 
emotion incidental to the caresses of a pure and vir- 



its Consequences. 103 

tuous affection, which in some measure counterba- 
lances the luxurious fatigue consequent upon xational 
and temperate indulgence. 

My immediate object is now to insist upon the 
fact, that the habit of masturbation is far more dan- 
gerous than excesses committed with women. This 
will appear evident from a variety of considerations. 
A well-known medical writer adopts the axiom, that 
"Moderate indulgence in the natural way is useful, 
when the wants of the system imperatively demand 
it, but when solicited by the diseased fancy, it weak- 
ens all the faculties, the loss of the seminal fluid 
occurring, not merely when its excretion is salutary, 
but too frequently for the constitutional powers to 
bear up against the repeated evacuation." The loss 
of the seminal secretion should ever bear a relative 
proportion to the wants of the animal economy, and 
to the powers of reparation, and this power varies 
excessively in different individuals. Now, unfortun- 
ately, in those who adict themselves to self-pollution, 
the genitals acquire a state of morbid irritability, 
which continually craves for diseased enjoyment, 
and perpetually puts them upon a repetition of the 
act. I say the power of reparation varies in intensity, 
and this is regulated much by the habits of the in- 
dividuals. It is well known that constant employ- 
ment, both of body and mind, places many beyond 
the reach of those sensual evils almost inevitably 
generated in idleness, but so it is, that the victims 
of self-pollution, and mostly the sedentary (for want 
of more active thought) are open to illusions of mere 
animal gratification. The Jewish Rabbies in their 
anxiety to preserve their nation, are said to have 
ordered, with a view of preventing the loss of vigour, 



104 Self-pollution arid 

that a peasant or labourer should indulge but once a 
week, a merchant but once a month, a sailor but 
twice a year, a studious man but once in two years. 
However practically inapplicable this may be, the 
principle involved is essentially a correct one, and 
the inference we should draw is this — that if natural 
sexual intercourse is thus wisely susceptible of re- 
striction, according to the physical circumstances in 
which we are placed, how horribly destructive of the 
vital energies must that habit be, which, day by day, 
regardless of the flagging strength, drains off the 
richest and most curiously elaborated secretion of the 
human body. Epicurus and Democritus were nearly 
of the same opinion with Zeno and the Athletce, and 
that their strength might remain unimpaired, never 
married. This is the opposite error, but it may 
serve to show how clearly the loss of the seminal 
fluid has been, in all ages, identified with the failure 
of vital energy. So Moses forbade indulgence be- 
fore battle. And if we examine the lower forms of 
the organized world, we shall find that many plants 
die as soon as they have flowered ; that stags and 
fish are emaciated after the sexual season ; while 
the prevention of fructification, by the removal of 
the sexual organs, renders annual plants biennial, 
that is doubling the term of their existence ; and 
that as to those which flower and perish within two 
years, this process extends their vitality through 
another or third year. 

Another reason why this habit is more certainly 
destructive, Js the unrestricted and indiscriminate 
ruin it inflicts upon the whole moral and mental con- 
stitution of man. No sooner has this uncleanliness 
got the ascendancy over our passions, than forthwith 



its Consequences. 105 

it pursues its slave every where, and retains posses- 
sion of him at all times and places, and upon the 
most serious occasions, and in the very acts of out- 
ward devotion ; he ever and anon finds himself 
transported with lustful conceptions and desires, 
which incessantly follow him and take up his 
thoughts. I remember one who confessed to me, 
that he could not converse with a female for a few 
minutes without rushing to some place of secrecy, 
and there giving way to his vile propensity. His 
gratification arose from fancying that he was enjoy- 
ing sexual intercourse with her — can any state be 
more disgustingly degrading ? The masturbator is 
subject to all those disorders which arise from the 
application of the mind to one single thought, upon 
which all its energies are concentrated. In this way, 
although exhausted by perpetual excitement, such 
persons are liable to all the disorders incidental to 
primary affections of the brain, a state which places 
man beneath the brute creation, and more justly en- 
titles him to the contempt than pity of his fellow- 
creatures. Besides there is a transporting emotion 
incidental to the caresses of a pure and virtuous 
affection, which in some measure counterbalances 
the luxurious fatigue consequent upon rational and 
temperate indulgence. To this delicate susceptibility 
the miserable victim of solitary vice is obviously a 
stranger. The warm and passionate kiss, the unut- 
terable thrilling embrace that lovers only feel, lives 
only in his diseased fancy. For it cannot be ques- 
tioned that nature allots more: joy to those gratifica- 
tions, procured in her proper channels, than in those, 
which are repugnant to our organization. The joy 
which only the heart can appreciate, and which must 



106 Self -pollution and 

be carefully distinguished from that voluptuousness 
purely sensual, which even a prostitute may inspire, 
animates the circulation, aids digestion, accelerates 
all the functions, restores strength and supports 
it. This it is which gives to marriage that sacred 
home-felt sweetness which love inspires, and God 
looks down upon it approvingly. The sensualist 
affects to despise it, because, owing to the degrada- 
tion of his soul, there is a purity, and consequently 
an intensity, in such intercourse, he can never 
realize, scoffing at that he can never know. 

I shall next endeavour to trace out some of the 
ultimate consequences of sensualism. Excess with 
women (pre-supposing we escape contagious disease) 
points to the same evils as self-pollution ; but if 
with less certainty, it is, that it is physically impos- 
sible to drain the seminal vessels so violently, or so 
frequently, as from unnatural friction ; the mischief 
is limited by the capability of its perpetration. Be- 
sides self-pollution is the more general, and its effects 
develope themselves upon the young, at a period 
when the conservation of the vital forces is most 
important. 

The impotent from venereal excesses are mostly 
men who have run the long round of debauchery, 
and whose constitutional powers have been broken 
down by many years of irregularity, these are nei- 
ther irreclaimable nor incurable ; however, the great 
social evil, with which the guardians of youth have 
to grapple, is the sensualism that prematurely con- 
signs, in secrecy and ignorance of its nature, the 
t blooming girl and thoughtless youth to wasting dis- 
ease, or the silence of the grave ; that denies the 
procreative power to the remorseful and repentant 
wife or husband. 



its Consequences. 107 

The organs of the senses are prone to derange- 
ment from self-pollution. The nerves which supply 
the eye, the ear, as well as those which are distri- 
buted to the heart, stomach and lungs, originate in 
the base of the brain, in immediate relation with the 
cerebellum, or that portion of the nervous pulp which 
ministers specially to the amative functions. Hence 
it is perfectly natural to expect, that irritation from 
sympathy, might be transmitted in the roots of those 
nerves and by a reflex operation, to those organs of 
external sense, which they supply. A diminution, 
or total loss of sight immediately dependant upon a 
paralytic or diseased state of the retina or obtic 
nerve is by no means unfrequent, often, indeed the 
first indication of a failure of the cerebral powers, 
from unnatural stimulation of the sexual organs. 
This affection, when arising from such causes, is to 
be viewed as symptomatic of ulterior disease, and 
not as existing independently. It may occur sud- 
denly, even so as to be attended with entire blind- 
ness, or it may come on quickly, that is, it may be 
complete in a few days or weeks ; or it may arise 
gradually, and a long time elapse before it attains its 
utmost degree of obscurity. According to Richter, 
one of the most eminent of surgical authorities, " nd 
general iveakening causes operate upon the eyes, 
and occasion total blindness, so powerfully and 
often, as premature and excessive indulgence in 
venereal pleasures." It is the opinion of Mr. Law- 
rence, one of the council of the College of Surgeons, 
and Surgeon to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, 
that the disease in question is essentially inflamma- 
tory. At all events we know that the blood vessels 
of the brain are turgid from unnatural excitement, 



108 Self'pollution and 

and that debility may co-exist with local inflamma- 
tion. Inflammation or congestion of that portion of 
the brain, near the origin of the nerves of vision, is 
undoubtedly the immediate cause of this species of 
blindness, and this condition of brain is closely iden- 
tified with the morbid predicament of the slave of 
sensual excess. Hence the advice of Dr. Armstrong 
is truly pertinent : " Whenever a patient complains 
to you of weakness of sight, examine the brain." 

He might have added trace also, if possible, the 
causes of disease within the brain as referable to 
the habits of that patient, Now, if with Richter, 
we say, that excessive indulgence in venereal plea- 
sures operates as the most common cause of partial 
or total loss of sight, how much more closely effec- 
tive must be the habits of the masturbator in produc- 
ing such a calamity. Hoffman and Boerhaave r whose 
names will ever rank among the illustrious in physic, 
have both alluded to disease of the eyes as the 
result of unnatural practices and immoderate eva- 
cuations. "Not only the powers are lost but a cold 
sensation seizes all the limbs ; the sight is clouded 
and disturbing dreams preclude relief from sleep." 
So the Professor of Leydon University remarks — 
" The loss of too much semen occasions lassitude, de- 
bility, and renders exercise difficult, it causes con- 
vulsions and emaciation ; it deadens the senses and 
particularly the sight. Nature avenges nothing so 
dreadfully as transgressions against herself. When 
transgressions prove mortal, they are always offences 
against nature. Let parents and guaidians mark it 
well, that there are causes which dilate the pupil of 
the eye, produce imperfect vision, irritable eyelids, 
and intolerance of light, which neither the dealer in 



its Consequences. 109 

spectacles, nor the ordinary oculist can cure ; but 
which are surely susceptible of relief, if his youthful 
charge become subjected to the appropriate treat- 
ment. Another of the ultimate and permanent evils 
resulting from self-pollution is a failure in the powers 
of the mind, especially in the memory. It would 
appear, that between the brain, as the organ of the 
mind, and the genital apparatus, there exists a close 
and indissoluble relation ; and that disease, or unna* 
tural excitement of either, is productive of corres- 
ponding loss of power in both. They act alternately 
upon each other, in having a mutual and contrary 
effect. The more we strain the mental faculties, the 
less vigorous will be the generative organs, and con- 
versely the more we stimulate the generative power 
and waste its juices, the more does the brain become 
enfeebled, the faculties of thought, perception, and 
acuteness become blunted, and the deprivation of 
memory is the first to become obvious. 

A confusion of intellect, indecision and abstraction, 
are the result of the concentration of the cerebral 
energies or sensual gratifications. And it is perfectly 
consistent with what we know of the laws of living 
organization, that it should be so ; for, assuredly, 
nothing in the world, not even drunkenness, can so 
irretrievably ruin the brightest mental talents as the 
degrading habit of self-pollution. 

The eighth pair of nerves which supply chiefly 
the heart, lungs, stomach, and organs of digestion, 
arise from the base of the brain in close proximity to 
the nerves of vision Hence disease of this portion 
of the brain is reflected upon every organ that the 
nerve is destined to supply. Digestion is dependant 
upon nervous agency, and painful deviation from this 

10 



1 1 Self-pollution and 

unconscious action is often among the first of those 
permanent sorrows entailed upon the votary of sen- 
sualism. The change whereby the food is converted 
into nutricious chyme — the change which elaborates 
the milky chyle from the substance submitted to 
the action of the digestive organs, is a purely 
vital action, and whatever tends to deteriorate or 
weaken the vital forces, of necessity weakens the 
tone of the stomach, and produces the multiplied evils 
which infest the poor, nervous, shattered hypochon- 
driac ; who, looking to the link that binds cause to 
effect, can suppose that a fluid so cautiously secre- 
ted, and one possessed of such peculiar properties 
as the semen, can be perpetually drawn from the 
system, without the production of consequences 
which tell primarily upon the nervous system, and 
secondarily, upon all the organs under the governance 
and control of nervous agency ? For, of all the 
various causes by which diseases of debility and 
nervous relaxation are solicited and maintained, none 
are more common than too great evacuations of any 
character ; and, certainly, of all evacuations, that of 
the semen is most to be feared, when carried beyond 
the amount of natural excitement. Those individuals 
who suffer themselves to be governed rather by 
passion than reason, and whose vivid imaginations 
propel them into sensual habits earlier than nature 
destined, anticipate the ability of manhood ere 
vigour has established its proper empire, thus demol- 
ishing the delicate ground-work of physical energy, 
and soliciting an age of disgraceful imbecility, 
bringing ere middle life breaks on the summer of 
adolescence, all the sensitive infirmities of senility; 
producing in its impetuous current such an assem- 



its Consequences. Ill 

falage of morbid feelings, that life becomes a weari- 
some burden, and its endurance beyond the power 
of reason to sustain. In this way it is, that, by the 
repeated excitements of this uncongenial act, the 
: constitution is left in a very doubtful state of health, 
and that sensitive irritabi I it y^both of mind and body 
is produced and kept up, which is absolutely com- 
patible with the quiet discharge of any organic 
function, more especially that of digestion. 

If these premises be true,, and that they are, is 
unfortunately for the world at large, susceptible of 
sufficient proof, how absurd is the treatment which 
is founded upon absolute ignorance of the frequent 
cause of derangement of the digestive organs ? The 
late learned Dr. Ryan, whose. abilities as a practical 
physician, were only equalled by his acquired learn- 
ing and innate knowledge of human nature, remarks, 
very pointedly, "There is a vast deal of injury done 
not merely to public morals, but to individual health 
by the abuses and excesses of the reproductive func- 
tions." The Primitive Fathers and Physicians, have 
duly noticed the evils to which I allude, and every 
experienced- medical practitioner can attest their fre- 
quent occurrence. u // is all well" he observes, 
"for sentimentalists and the mock-modest to de- 
claim about a notice of the?n y hul justice, morality, 
and the preservation of health, as well as the perpe- 
tuation of the human race, demand it; such, howe- 
ver, is the hypocrisy of the day, that even a notice 
in a dead language is abused and condemned by 
ignorant, intolerant bigots, and fools, who are una- 
ble to appreciate the importance of the subject." 

I say then, it is absurd to expect rational treat- 
ment, in these melancholy cases, from practitioners, 



112 Self-pollution and 

who are either wilfully or innocently ignorant of the 
cause of the disorder. The terms dyspepsia, indi- 
gestion, bilious complaint, disorder of the digestive 
organs, are exceedingly common, and no very de- 
finite or accurate significancy is attached to them ; 
perhaps, in the whole range of medical science, no 
terms have been more vaguely employed, even by 
medical practitioners themselves. Many cases of 
disease of the stomach or liver are traceable to the 
state of the mind. The existence of one single cor- 
roding passion, the unceasing prevelancy of one 
soul-absorbing morbid appetite, is sufficient, by its 
reflex operation, to affect the stomach, by its depres- 
sing or exciting power, exerted through the brain, as 
the organ of the mind. The tongue becomes furred, 
the bowels act irregularly, the face is pale, unmean- 
ing, inexpressive or sad, a livid circle surrounds the 
eyes, the lips become turned, the cheeks flush in the 
evening or after a full meal, and an indescribable 
sensation of giddiness and dullness lasts for an hour 
or more after dinner. The liver acts irregularly, 
there is flatulency, acidity, w r ith unpleasant or pain- 
ful eructations, sleep is obtained with difficulty, or 
broken with unpleasant dreams. Many cases which 
have the character of indigestion, are complicated, 
with true inflammatory thickening, or ulceration of 
the lining mucous membrane of the stomach or 
alimentary canal. If this occur in relation to the 
outer surface of that organ, the tongue is generally 
pale, there is pain on pressure, flatulence, nausea, 
retching or vomiting ; most commonly there is a pale 
face, shortness of breath, a quickened pulse, and 
gradual emaciation ; a complication of disordered 
manifestations, more common among females, whose 



its Consequences. 113 

habits have been those of luxurious sensual indul- 
gence, and sufficiently obvious to the intelligent eye. 
Sometimes sensualism tells insidiously, but not less 
fatally upon the liver, and by breaking up the ener- 
gies of the nervous system, leaves that important 
organ exposed to the action of the first accidental 
and exciting cause of inflammatory excitement. In 
these instances, the spirits are depiessed, there is a 
weight or uneasiness in the middle of the breast; 
the patient sighs often and deeply, there is a dry 
cough, and pain shooting from the right side to the 
shoulder, sometime the skin has a yellowish or dirty 
tinge, there is a depravity or deficiency of bile, and 
very often the urine is distinctly tinged with it; or, 
as dependant upon an affection of the brain, which 
may be generated by sensual excess, the stomach 
may be disordered secondarily, manifesting that con- 
dition, not by redness, but by a remarkable rough- 
ness and foulness of the tongue ; and the inference 
to be drawn as to the results in such cases, are often 
materially corroborated by the conjoined presence of 
uneasiness, numbness, tingling in the extremities, 
indications of inflammation of the spinal cord, and' 
all arising out of, or dependant upon, irritation of the 
brain and nervous system, from unnatural excesses. 
For, let it ever be borne in mind, that many diseased 
conditions of the stomach, liver, or bowels, are only 
secondary, following in the train of some primary 
mischief resulting to the brain or spine, either from 
excessive stimulation, or what is still worse, from 
. excessive evacuations, and an unnatural demand from 
nervous energy. 

Among females there is a form of disease, indi- 
cated by a peculiar sallow or greenish hue of tbe: 

10* 



114 Self -pollution and 

skin, by a tongue covered with a dirty white fur, 
clay-coloured stools, and a depraved appetite ; gene- 
rally with emaciation, retention of the menstrual 
discharge, and a swollen condition of the feet and 
ancles. It is invariably secondary of a local affec- 
tion, chiefly of the stomach, liver or bowels, and this 
again is very frequently found to originate, if not in 
actual vicious practices, at least in that moral per- 
version of the mind, which can exist only in brood- 
ing over the creations of a prurient fancy, and in 
nursing the inflamed imagination with the sickly ex- 
citing sentimentalities of the worst writers on fic- 
tion. There is a healthy attitude of mind which 
owns not the falsehood pervading these productions, 
namely, that passion, blind passion, is omnipotent 
irresistable, and invincible ; but woe betide the un- 
happy girl who becomes the slave of this destruc- 
tive dogma ; it is the vortex of rationality, and down 
its hateful gulf is oft precipitated, all self-control. 
Inordinate affections, instead of remaining subju- 
gated to wholesome restraint, soon run riot in the 
maddening throbbing bosom. Fuel can scarcely be 
supplied with sufficient rapidity from the circulating 
library, volume after volume of mawkish trash, tells 
with more fatal certainty, because of the thin, yet 
badly transparent veil of pretended morality, tagged 
like a tail-piece to the luscious story ; seduction, 
intrigue, and blind impulse, become to a young girl 
as familiar as household words; her mind becomes 
polluted, and bodily suffering is soon the inevitable 
concomitant of the poison drawn from the book con- 
cealed under the curtained pillow. Leucorrhoea, 
jluor albus, or vulgarly the " whites," is a frequent 
form of disease, even among unmarried females, and 



ate Consequences. 115 

symptomatic of that train of morbid feelings termed 
nervous, hysterical, or bilious. Systematic writers 
appear to be fully aware, that sometimes it arises 
from " certain solitary and, vicious indulgences" 
respecting the nature of which it is totally unneces- 
sary to adopt more explicit language. And that this 
is really the case, the records of my own practice, 
(were it fitting to reveal the secrets of the confes- 
sional,) are sufficient to afford startling proof. Let 
the proud father of the clever girl, whose early 
spirit he is the first to appreciate, watch closely the 
associations she may form, even with those of her 
own sex, and most especially the books that she 
reads when no eye is near. Female servants have 
been known to introduce the most villanous practices 
to the nightly couch of a young mistress, and to 
pollute, by filthy conversation, the minds of children, 
inflaming passsion that needs at that age, rather to 
be suppressed, or at least to be directed aright. 

I have said that insanity is not an unfrequent 
result of sensualism. Excess, even of indulgence 
in the lawful gratifications of the marriage state, is 
often connected with affections of^the head ; the 
excitement is so great, from determined effort 
and failing power, that fatal effects may arise from 
the gorged state of the blood vessels of the brain, 
in consequence of the heart being thrown into unna- 
tural and violent contraction. Nay the heart itself, 
or a large blood vessel, has burst during the orgasm. 
My present reference, however, is rather to the 
effects of excess upon the brain. Attilla, the cele- 
brated King of the Huns, is said to have died in 
the act of coition, from the bursting of a blood ves- 
sel ; and several such cases are on record. It is 



116 Self-pollution and 

seriously to be doubted, whether an immediate fai- 
lure of nervous energy, or the exhaustion of senso- 
rial power, might not be the cause of death, in some 
of the instances supposed to be dependant upon 
arterial rupture. On this subject I shall be pardoned 
in again quoting the expressions of Dr. Armstrong, 
one of the most sensible, intelligent, simple-minded of 
reasoners, and not more remarkable for his sagacity, 
than for close observation of facts. He was accus- 
tomed to say in his public lectures, as a teacher of 
medicine in London — " The solitary vice of Onan- 
ism produces affections of the head. I know a boy 
seventeen or eighteen years old, who went at the 
age of ten to school, where this vice was very com- 
mon, and he became the subject of it, and from being 
a fine active clever boy, he became a perfect idiot — 
his eyes became prominent, his pupils dilated ; he had 
pains in his head and down the course of the spine, 
loss of memory, a sily unmeaning expression of the 
countenance, and a tottering gait." The doctor 
observes — " I think I should knoio a person in tli£ 
street who has addicted himself to tills vice, by merely 
walking behind him, from his peculiar gait ." Let 
not ihen the victim of secret vice flatter himself his 
unmanly act escapes detection. I put it to the com- 
mon sense intelligence of men, who have not made 
the sympathies of the nervous system their peculiar 
study, whether in fact there be any thing wonderful 
in the relation between sensualism and insanity. 
Apart from the power of vicious indulgences induc- 
ing bodily disease — apart from the debility thereby 
necessarily engendered, and that nervous weakness 
concomitant wiih the terrific loss and drain of the 
seminal fluid. I say, excluding these direct and 



its Consequences. 117 

physical causes in themselves sufficient to account 
for madness, there is enough in moral causation to 
produce the wreck of intellect. Do we not know 
that certain pursuits often predispose to madness, 
where the imagination is much called into exer- 
cise ? So poets and painters who surround them- 
selves with an imaginary world of their own, are 
liable to insanity, and if there be one being, who 
more completely than another isolates himself in an 
ideal world, it is the devotee of solitary indulgence ; 
his mind ever reverting to the polluting theme — his 
powers of fancy on fire, or actively tasked to invent 
new shapes of excitement — his depraved imagination 
incessantly employed in poring over some unattain- 
able lust, the very slave of that appetite which grows 
not appeased, but more voracious and insatiable by 
present gratification. 

Insanity, then, in its present relation, is to he re- 
garded, as the melancholy and not unfrequent climax 
of the consequences of self pollution. The same 
causes which tend to enervate the general strength, 
to induce disease of the digestive organs, to break 
down constitutional energy, by impairing the tone of 
the nervous system, undoubtedly lead to madness. 
Generally there is derangement of the functions of 
the stomach and intestinal canal, sometimes conjoined 
with these, inflammation of the liver. There is evi- 
dent manifestation of disordered intellect, seldom 
furious delirium, but fixed, settled, stupid vacancy, a 
feeble oppressed pulse, and a cool pallid skin. 

Suicide is not an unfrequent termination of in- 
sanity, and doubtless, many cases of self-destruction, 
which are recorded in the daily journals are attribu- 
table to vicious practices, A momentary impulse is 



118 Self -pollution and 

suddenly acted upon. The consciousness of impo- 
tence, it may be of baffled attempts to derive sensual 
gratification from abused and now powerless organs — 
the self-loathing consequent upon self-inflicted pol- 
lution ; these set themselves instantly and violently 
in awiul array against the poor trembling weak votary 
of criminal indulgence. In a moment of desperation, 
he rushes unbidden upon the realities of eternity. — 
May madness shield him from the guilt of deliberate 
suicide ! A learned physician remarks — " I have met 
with many individuals who have had, they say, a pre- 
disposition to destroy themselves, and I find this es- 
pecially the case, when there is united with it dis- 
order of the stomach, liver, bowels, or head ,io) \ich leads 
to mad/ness" This is a valuable remark, and its prac- 
tical relation to sensualism, as inducing in many in- 
stances this precise state of things is too obvious to 
escape observation. It is a singular fact, that such 
patients only, after a course of self-indulgence which 
is evidently destroying their sexual powers, consider 
this habit as the fundamental cause of their ill health. 
Unprofitable and unpleasant is the task on which 
such a one now enters, for, instead of endeavoring to 
fortify his mind against the immoral attacks of a de- 
praved imagination, he fondly courts them, and, as 
prepossession always exceeds the circle of possibility, 
he thinks every, individual is acquainted with the na- 
ture, cause, and history of his complaint, every pim- 
ple, every flush of the face alarms him, and thus he 
fears the scorn of the world, which never gives itself 
the trouble to think about him or his disease. The 
constitution thus breaks, as it were before the ravage 
of the disorder, and thus exhibits a most hopeless 
state of exhaustion — all its powers become drained, 



its Consequences. 119 

all its energies evaporated, and the disease eventually 
riots upon a hapless imbecility which no physical nor 
moral remedy can reach — an imbecility closely united 
to mania; but what the indescribable process is that 
precedes this madness, we have no actual theory to 
guide us; the immediate cause we cannot trace of this 
most afflicting, but "most obscure of all human ma- 
ladies ; as none but the miserable sufferer can de- 
scribe the tension and pain of those hallucinations, 
morosities, and burning sensibilities, that by a gradual 
but certain action, drive reason from her throne. 
Medical enquiry is alone confined to external symp- 
toms, and, of course, possesses no means of following 
the inward progress of the disease. The existence 
of it is generally indicated by great debility, listless- 
ness, want of resolution and activity, a great dispo- 
sition to sadness, an idea of future evil, and a long 
train of similar sensations, which powerfully contri- 
bute to debilitate the general system — this effect is 
manifested by the body becoming feeble and meagre, 
the appetite voracious, the organs of generation so 
flaccid and enfeebled, that the slightest titillation pro- 
duces erection, which is succeeded eitlier by an emis- 
sion of a portion of the natural mucous of the glands 
of the urethra,or a secretion of the prostate gland, and 
the vesiculce seminales, and a depression of spirits ; 
these symptoms, by constant repetition, become very 
unpleasant during the night. A constant discharge 
of thin, clear and slimy liquid, is at. last produced, 
attended by that nervous irritability which, in many 
constitutions, lays the foundation of more serious con- 
sequences, and if persisted in, will reduce the patient 
to the last stage of confirmed consumption. 

It may be deemed an exaggeration, when it is 



120 Self-pollution and 

stated, that full three-fourths of the insane owe their 
malady to the effects of masturbation ; but the as- 
sertion is corroborated by one of the first writers on 
medical jurisprudence, and is fully borne out by the 
daily experience of proprietors of lunatic asylums. 
The practice of self-abuse usually has its origin in 
boarding-schools, and other places where young per- 
sons congregate in numbers — and there are few per- 
sons who may have observed the vice practised, (al- 
though it may be unpleasant to avow as much,) that 
could resist the contamination. 

" One sickly sheep infects the flock, 
And poisons all the rest." 

And thus it is, though ninety and nine be pure and 
spotless as the driven snow, if the hundreth be im- 
moral, the poison is soon disseminated, and the whole 
flock become initiated into a vice, which if indulged 
in, will blast their intellectual faculties, and probably 
consign them as outcasts of society — rendering them 
slavering idiots, or the inmates of a lunatic asylum. 
It is not only in private schools that this sin rages. 
Our public seminaries and colleges are not exempt 
from it. The heads of our universities are particu- 
larly scrupulous in driving from their neighborhood 
the frail fair, lest they should contaminate the votaries 
of learning, whilst a vice far more degrading in its 
practice, and infinitely more baneful in its effects, 
rages within the very sanctuaries of classic lore. — 
Many a brilliant genius has sunk into fatuity beneath 
its degrading influence. Loss of memory, idiocy, 
blindness, total impotence, nervous debility, paralysis, 
stranguary, &c, are among the unerring consequen- 
ces of an indulgence in this criminal passion. 



its Consequences. 121 

It is fitting that I next allude in closer and more 
specific detail of some of those diseases of the 
lungs, which are undoubtedly called into active de- 
velopment by sensual excess, and as it is the most 
destructive, so it is the most certainly inevitable 
cause of consumption — namely, that form of viscious 
excess, to which I have made frequent allusion. How 
absurd the hope> that the treatment of pulmonary 
diseases should assume a rational character, in those 
instances where sensualism, the concealed cause of 
them, is entirely over-looked by the routine practi- 
tioner ; and where, spite of his remedies and learned 
prescriptions, the baneful habit is still indulged in. 

Every human being comes into the world ivith 
some weak point, a predisposition to disease of one 
locality or tissue of the frame, rather than another; 
but many persons, from accidental causes, (of which 
sensualism must undoubtedly be accounted for,) 
rouse the dormant elements of disease into destruc- 
tive activity. In common language, they play 

TRICKS WITH THEIR CONSTITUTIONS. 

As the consequences of this, the incipient indica- 
tions of true consumptive disease, develope them- 
selves. " Frequent and excessive debaucheries" 
are assigned by all systematic writers, as among the 
most prominent of the causes of this train of sufferings. 
From the first appearances of the hectic symptoms, the 
urine is high coloured, and deposits a copious sediments 
The appetite, however, is not greatly impaired, and 
the tongue appears clean, but as the disease advances 
the throat assumes an inflamed appearance, and the 
red vessels of the eye become of a pearly white. 
A florid circumscribed redness appears on each 

11 



122 Self -pollution and 

cheek, at other times the face is pale, and the coun- 
tenance somewhat dejected. 

Sensualism is justly to be enumerated as one of 
the most marked causes of gout and rheumatism. 
Eunuchs are known to be free from attacks of gout, 
indolence and inactivity ; the brcoding of the dis- 
eased fancy over polluted conceptions, all tend to 
engender these diseases, and it is obvious, that, rooted 
in a system, enfeebled by vicious and solitary indul- 
gences, there is little of constitutional energy left, 
either to parry their attacks, to resist their presence, 
or to bear the requisite treatment for their removal. 

Among the minor evils consequent upon depraved 
indulgences, I ought not to omit all notice of those 
eruptive diseases, chiefly of the face, frequently 
observable among young persons, and though not 
invariably, yet often assignable to improper habits. 
From time immemorial the popular belief has been, 
that sexual improprieties, or the undue loss of the 
seminal secretion from masturbation, had a direct 
tendency to destroy the growth of the hair, and pro- 
duce baldness ; nor is the vulgar opinion without 
foundation in truth. Its presence in profusion is a 
fair index of sexual power. When, from excess, 
that energy falters, Nature, as if for the purpose of 
economizing her scanty resources, casts off the com- 
paritively unimportant appendage ; the hair becomes 
white from defective nutrition, or in middle life the 
head assumes the baldness, though not the venerable 
dignity, of old age. The absence of hair upon the 
cheeks and chin is frequently associated with solitary 
practices. A beardless chin, and an effeminate voice 
are the aversion of the female sex, as well as the 
object of their ridicule ; and we may allow they are 



its Consequences? 123 

generally pretty good judges that way, as believing 
the sentiments in Hudibras — 

11 Want of virility is averred, 
To bs the cause of want of beard." 

There is a species of gleety discharge, distinct 
from the consequences of inflammatory clap, which 
is not an unusual concomitant among the sequels of 
self-pollution. In resent cases, the disease may in 
general admit of removal, not by the administration 
of irritating injections, not by remedies directed 
locally, but by reference to that diseased state of the 
whole generative system, induced by the unmanly 
habit operating as its cause. 

Lastly, the testicle itself may become the subject 
of chronic induration and enlargement, from causes 
which tend to disturb its agency as a secretory gland. 
And, independently of the direct and immediate 
diseases to which the testicle is unquestionably sub- 
jected from the habit of masturbation, 1 have fre- 
quently observed, that there arises an unpleasant 
perspiration from the vessels all around the genera- 
tive organ?, accompanied with much soreness, and 
inflammatory redness, producing no ordinary amount 
of suffering. This affection, though disgusting and 
easily detected, is comparatively trifling, and serving 
only to mark the practised sensualist in the notice of 
those possessed of the least discernment. I say it is 
trivial, in comparison with that permanent disor- 
ganization of the vessels of the cord, known as 
Varicocele, and consisting of dilitation and enlarge- 
ment of the returning veins of the testicle. If I 
were to observe, that this disease has been noticed 
as supervening, in nearly ninety cases out of every 



124 Self-pollution and 

hundred of self-pollution, that have fallen under my 
treatment, I should be guilty of no undue statement. 
Some of my patients have described this disorganiza- 
tion as resembling a number of small twisted cords, 
running into the side of the body of the testicle ; 
others aptly compare il to the feeling which would 
be communicated to the finger from a bag of earth 
worms, sometimes loosely felt, but mostly with pain 
of a dull, aching, dragging character. This state of 
parts, by maintaining irritability of the vessels of the 
testicle, is an almost certain indication of commenc- 
ing impotence, and is not unfrequently found in con- 
nection with absolute sexual helplessness. 

It is a remarkable fact, that many men, with ap- 
proaching impotence, are ignorant of the existence 
of this state of the cord, until seminal weakness, or 
premature emission or intercourse, draw their atten- 
tion to the state of the genital organs. Dr. Robert 
Thomas, in his work on the practice of Physic, ob- 
serves, that " Schirrhosity of the prostate gland is a 
disease with which men advanced in life are apt to 
be afflicted, hut particularly those ioho imprudently 
'produce an excitement oj the seminal vessels, by 
long toying toith ivomen, or by unnatural means, as 
Onanism^ He remarks, that, " the frequency of the 
disease may be attributed to the unusual degree of 
irritation, which in the present licentious state of 
society, is kept up in the organs of generation, by 
Cytherean excesses, and their attendants— strictures 
and the use of bougies. After a time, sharp lan- 
cinating pains are felt darting through the gland ; the 
flow of urine becomes considerably obstructed, and 
its painful discharge is one among many distressing 
symptom So" 



its Consequences. 125 

What do I propose to the miserable sufferer, un- 
der any form of the multifarious evils arising from 
sensualism ? No less than the removal of his im- 
mediate sorrows ; the pain and weakness which 
infest his bodily organization ; but far higher and 
nobler aims than these lie concealed beyond the 
mitigation of present infirmity. I indulge the fond, 
the ambitious, yet rational wash, that my efforts may 
be instrumental in rescuing the unhappy slave of 
passion from the moral thraldom in w r hich he is in- 
volved ; my unceasing aim is to acquire that confi- 
dence, that happy mastery over the affections of the 
inner man, which wielded in the cause of virtue, 
purity, and truth, may enable me to drag the sensu- 
alist from the miry slough of his own vicious, impure 
and contaminating fancies, and replace him again on 
that proud elevation befitting a man ; befitting the 
rational lord of the universe, the defence of the 
weaker sex, and the glory of his own. 

The moral and mental management of my patients 
is, therefore, a matter with me of the gravest im- 
portance ; and though, in glowing language, it is 
mine occasionally to deprecate the criminality of 
self-indulgence ; while I extenuate not the sin, I can- 
not but sympathize with suffering — with that weak- 
ness — that deplorable imbecility of nature, which 
permits sensuality to lay the reins on the neck of 
passion— which flings away the rudder of reason, 
and relinquishes to the winds and the waves the frail 
bark of humanity. It is mine to point to cheerful 
activity, insensibly and imperceptibly to lead, the 
unconscious mind away from the morbid train of 
thought inseparably connected with vicious practi- 
ces. Inactivity is unquestionably a great cause of; 

11* 



120 Self-pollution and 

this, as well as of other vicious propensities. When 
the faculties are busied in some particular pursuit, 
and employed in an industrious calling, the tempta^ 
tions that lead to those practices lose half their force. 
There is less leisure for the perpetual recurrence to 
habits which require secrecy, when the mind is 
roused to duty, or to considerations more consonant 
with the true dignity of human nature. Votaries to 
these abominations feel their degradation, groan 
under the galling yoke of habit, the soul becomes 
subservient to the tyranny of its overwhelming in- 
fluence, and hence it is obvious, that mere medical 
prescription is insufficient. 

The spell must be broken, not so directly by an 
appeal to their fears, as those higher and better 
faculties, which, though beclouded and tremulously 
weak, require only the assurance of the pity and 
kindness of a confidential friend to regain their 
lost authority. With the majority it is vain to dwell 
on the enormity of the crime \ there is little practi- 
cal and immediate utility in pointing out to them,, 
that the habits of sensualism are contrary to the laws 
of God and man. Such moral sermons, experience 
tella us, have but little effect on young people, who, 
even more than men of advanced years, will be 
regulated in their conduct almost solely by their 
present interest. Let the young man be taught to 
feel, that the habits which are destroying his 
strength, render him unable to occupy his posi- 
tion amongst his fellow men, will inevitably become 
obvious, and draw down, from the beings around him, 
the expression of their merited and deep contempt. 
Let him ponder seriously upon the scorn of ivoman, 
and study the contemptuous address which Ovid has 



its Consequences. 



127 



left on relation, from the mouth of his disappointed, 
baffled mistress — 

V Go — for a silly, imperforating thing."* 

It is said, that the Roman soldiers preferred death 
to castration ; and, doubtlessly, the direct fear and 
shame of impotence has operated, and will operate, 
if clearly evident, in the majority of instances, as a 
surer safeguard against self-pollution, than the 
deepest and most awful appeals to a higher tribunal. 
It ought not to be so, but such is the constitution of 
our nature. Parents and tutors should have a strict 
eye to youth, recollecting that upon its purity 
depends all their future prospects. 

It is by the practice of temperance in all sensual 
and legitimate gratification, and by total avoidance, 
ignorance, and abstinence from the artificial pollu- 
tions of sensualism, that at the commencement of 
life the constitution is so settled and strengthened, 
as to bear up well against the storms of manhood, 
and the winter of old age. " Youth," says Linnaeus, 
" is the important period for framing a robust consti- 
tution. Nothing is so much to be dreaded as the 
premature or excessive indulgence of amorous plea- 
sures. A body that is enervated in youth seldom 
recovers itself; old age and infirmity speedily come 
on, and the thread of life is prematurely shortened." 
Sixteen hundred years before Linnaeus, that great 
naturalist, Plutarch, in his excellent work upon 
education of children, recommended the formation 
of their physical constitution as the first care of 
guardians and parents. " No care," said he, " should 
be neglected that may contribute to the elegance 
and strength of the body (the excesses of sensualism 



128 Self-pollution and its Consequences. 

are destructive of both,) for," he adds, "the founda- 
tion of a happy old age is an uninjured constitution 
in youth. Temperance and moderation at that age 
are the inseparable passports to happy grey hairs." 



CHAPTER VII. 



Of Nocturnal Emissions, Seminal Weakness, Impotence* 
Nervous Debility, and the general treatment of the consequences 
of Self-pollution. 



The secretory glands of the human body form an 
apparatus, the action of which is unvarying and con- 
stant. The liver is perpetually employed in the 
formation of bile, the kidneys in the separation of 
urine from the blood ; in fact all the secretions are 
derivable from that living and vitalizing fluid. The 
gall-bladder is provided as the temporary receptacle 
for the bilious soapy fluid secreted by the liver, and 
as the wants of the system require, it is poured into 
the first intestine, to assist in the separation of the 
nutritive portion of the partially digested aliment. 
Precisely analogous is the action of the testicles, 
pouring their appropriate secretion into the recepta- 
cles described in the anatomical section of this work, 
and denominated the " Vesiculce Seminales or seed 
bladders" not to be absorbed again into the system, 
but rather to be excreted as indispensible to the 
reproductive act. Hence the stimulus arising from 
distension of these vessels, becomes a pleasurable 
impulse to the necessary multiplication of the spe- 
cies ; and if sexual desire were susceptible of gratis 



1 30 Nocturnal Emissions. 

fication, only as the result of instinct, if depraved 
man, instead of lashing his genital organs by filthy 
conversation, lewd and impure imaginations, and the 
various causes which are entirely absent among the 
brute creation ; if, like them, he were content to fol- 
low the dictates of his unerring organization, diseases 
arising from excess would be unknown, equally 
amongst us as with them ; and their proverbial and 
almost certain fecundity be but the transcript of our 
own. As the seminal vessels (like the gall bladder) 
will not allow of extraordinary distention, the thinner 
portions of the semen become partially absorbed, 
and though, thereby, the bulk of that secretion be 
lessened, yet the residuum becoming more acrid and 
stimulating, the impulse to excretion is thus rendered 
unconquerable. And so, Nature (in the absence of 
the act to which the stimulating impulse tends) 
occasionally relieves herself of the superabundant 
secretion. Of this act men are mostly unconscious ; 
if, however, it arrests attention, its frequency and 
its consequences, are the circumstances that rouse 
the proper and natural fears of the sufferer. 

Occurring more frequently than at intervals of 
twenty-one days, Nocturnal Emissions are a decided 
proof of debility, and the certain harbingers of ap- 
proaching impotence. 

My ample experience warrants the conclusion, 
that the debility is more obviously confined, and 
absolute impotence more certainly follows in those 
instances, where emissions occur within the above- 
named period, or waking suddenly in the night at 
the moment of the discharge. In many instances 
the sleep is not broken, and it is comparatively diffi- 
cult to ascertain how often the evacuation occurs ; 



Nocturnal Emissions. 



131 



the consequences of the loss of the seminal fluid, 
are, however, sufficiently evident, occurring more 
frequently than can be fairly ascribable to the dis- 
tention of healthy vessels, the most energetic mea- 
sures are instantly requisite to avert the identical 
mischief which would arise, if the loss of the 
seminal secretion were solicited and voluntary. 
Profuse and frequent nocturnal emissions, may or 
may not, be connected with the habit of self-pollu- 
tion, and, as the term implies, may occur during the 
hours of darkness, when the powers of the body are 
prostrate in sleep. A person can never sleep soundly 
but when he is free from all causes of bodily irritation, 
the distention of the seminal vessels, if occunng 
naturally, exciting amorous dreams and evacuations, 
can only occur at such intervals as are consistent 
with healthy action, namely, beyond twenty-one days ; 
but exclusively of vicious practices, there are causes 
which certainly tend to the establishment of this 
discharge, and imprint upon it all the characters of 
habit. Nocturnal emissions are most frequently at- 
tributable to the practice of self -pollution, and in 
many cases to venereal excess ; but it may arise 
from disease of the testicle, or from an enlarged 
schirrhous state of the prostate gland. When aris- 
ing from the latter cause, the discharge of semen is 
mixed with the natural secretion of the prostate, 
and the mixed fluids stain the linen of a dirty yel- 
lowish hue, very closely resembling the stains pro- 
ducible from gonorrhoea or common clap, and the 
gleety discharge which accompanies its chronic 
stages. Lodgments of hardened feculent matter, in 
the large intestines, sometimes occur, as a mechani- 
cal irritant, and thus producing diurnal as well as 



132 Nocturnal Emissions. 

nocturnal evacuations of the most important fluid 
of the human body. 

A popular author on this subject observed — " The 
causes of these nightly or c ivet dreams' as they are 
called are numerous. In the first place the testicles 
must have acquired, through the practice of Onan- 
ism, (for involuntary emissions rarely assume the 
formidable character here [depicted except induced 
by masturbation,) a morbid sensitiveness, that on the 
slightest local or neighbouring irritation, they put 
in action their secretive powers. In fact the in* 
firmity might not inaptly be termed a consumption 
of those glands; consequently, the causes may be, 
at this period, hoemorrhoids or piles, constipation, 
indigestion, irritibility of the bladder or kidneys, &c, 
&c, for they all, more or less, are present, and per- 
haps, severally aggravated by stimuli of one kind or 
other, taken during the day or previously to rest* 
Another occasion may be the loss of tone of the 
absorbents, and also loss of sensibility of the pas- 
sages through which the discharge escapes ; thereby 
acting as somnolent sentinels only on the brain, 
whereby even the little control the will might pos- 
sess is lost." So by this we perceive, that this in- 
firmity is not merely local debility of the generative 
apparatus, but that many other functions in life par- 
ticipate. The constant drain from the testicles 
impoverishes the whole system, and the same phe- 
nomena ensue as when Onanism is practised to the 
same extent. The semen of a person tormented 
with this infirmity is thin, watery, sickly odoured, 
and rarely prolific. 

Although I have already depicted the consequen- 
ces of unnatural indulgences in the previous pages, 



Nocturnal Einissions. 



133 



llie following passage, from a more able pen than 
my own, exhibits so well the desolating effects" 
alluded to, that its transcript is too useful to my pur- 
pose to neglect : — " The muscles of the youth become 
soft, he is idle, his body becomes bent, his gait is 
sluggish, and he is scarcely able to support himself; 
The digestion becomes enfeebled, the breath fceted, 
the intestines inactive, the excrements hardened in 
the rectum, and producing additional irritation of the 
seminal conduits in its vicinity. The circulation 
being no longer free, the youth sighs often, the com- 
plexion is livid, and the skin, and forehead especially, 
is studded with pimples ; the corners of the mouth 
are lengthened, the nose becomes sharp, the sunken 
eyes, deprived of brilliancy and enclosed in blue 
circles, are cast down ; no look of gaity remains — 
the very aspect is criminal. General sensibility be- 
comes excessive, producing tears without a cause ; 
perception is weakened, and memory almost des- 
troyed ; distraction or absence of mind, renders the 
judgment unfit for any operation. The imagination 
gives birth to fantasies and fears without grounds ; 
the slightest allusion to the dominating passion pro- 
duces motions of the muscles of the face, the flush 
of shame, or a stale of despair. The wretched being 
finishes by shunning the face of men and dreading 
the observation of women ; his character is entirely 
corrupted, or his mind is totally stnpified. Involun- 
tary loss of the reproductive liquid takes place dur-^ 
ing the night, and also during the daily motions ; and 
there ensues a total exhaustion, bringing on heavi- 
ness of the head, singing in the ears, and frequent 
faintings, together with pains, convulsive tremblings, 
and partial paralysis." 

12 



134 Nocturnal Emissions. 

In reference to the physiology of the seminal 
receptacles, it is carefully to be borne in mind, thai 
the stimulus of the sexual orgasm is the only irritant 
which, naturally, they are destined to obey; hence, 
whatever is foreign to this is sufficient to rouse the 
chain of action producing emission, and must, un- 
doubtedly, operate most detrimentally to the whole 
animal economy, in reference to the generative 
organs themselves, imposing upon them tendencies 
repugnant to their natural agency, which, at no dis- 
tant period, inevitably and completely abolish their 
living power. Seminal emissions, during, sleep, may 
be expected as the result of unnecessary stimulation. 
This emission is commonly produced towards day- 
break ; arising from a renewal of that general excita- 
bility which takes place during the first sleep, the 
interval rendering the system more susceptible of 
every new impression, and the debility of a sensitive 
mind, favouring this new state of things. Repeti- 
tion succeeds repetition, habit becomes established, 
the association is confirmed, the difficulty of des- 
troying the morbid animal propensity is rendered 
daily more tedious and doubtful, while the power of 
desire of performing the natural functions, are, of 
course, proportionably impaired. 

The mind encroaching upon the prerogatives of 
the natural stimuli ; the organs of generation, either 
from a morbid rapidity of action, or from being long 
accustomed to obey the dictates of imagination, on 
the slightest irritation, are no longer capable of the 
excitement produced on a healthy subject by the 
opposite sex. In accurate conformity with this view 
of the subject, Rousseau recommends to the period 
t)f youth, the active sports of the field, as days of 



Nocturnal E??iissions. 136 

fatigue will be followed by nights of repose ; and 
thus the superabundant imtabilitij of the system 
trill be relieved. 

The reproductive power may not be entirely des« 
troyed by that state of generative debility which is 
engendered by nocturnal emissions ; and yet, very 
painful consequences, of another character, may un- 
questionably arise. A healthy female may become 
pregnant, from the feeble, yet exhausting, effort of a 
man whose constitutional power is seriously broken; 
yet it would be unfair, unphilosophical, unsupported 
by any analogy drawn from the history of the lower 
animals, to expect that this circumstance would not 
tell most powerfully and detrimentally upon the off- 
spring. The opinions of the learned in all ages 
have not varied widely on this subject. Lucretius, 
and a great number of ancient physiologists, admit- 
ted this doctrine. That great man considered that 
there was a mixture of fluids, and that these united 
in the sexual organs of the female, were animated, 
developed, and changed into a being resembling 
those who furnished them. Further, that the most 
vigorous of the two determined the sex ; and if this 
principle be admitted, it is easy to trace every puny 
ordiseased peculiarity the father or mother may trans- 
mit. It appears to be the general opinion, that 
whichever parent furnishes the most elaborate, the 
most abundant seminal fluid, would impress the 
lineaments and form the offspring ; that the most 
vigorous parent, who would possess most genital 
power, would determine the sex and physical cha- 
racter of the infant; and consequently, that the 
offspring would most certainly resemble this parent, 
Uoth in mind and body. If g.eni;al power be equal, 



J36 Seminal Weakness. 

the child may be expected to resemble both. But 
this can scarcely be expected where there is debility 
of the generative organs in either parent, and the 
elaboration of imperfect fluids, from their too fre- 
quent escape. 



SEMINAL WEAKNESS. 

The prominent character of seminal weakness is 
general not partial debility. The seminal vessels 
are fitted to perform certain functions with progres- 
sive regularity, which, if undisturbed by disease, or 
unimpaired by vicious perversion of the natural 
sexual habit, they will continue to execute, through 
the whole range of the years of active manhood. 

Sexual ability in man, is a mysteriously com- 
pound power, requiring a perfect association in 
the action of the secretory organ of the seminal 
secretion, and the instrument of its ejaculation and 
discharge. Any functional irregularity, or want of 
correspondency between the action of the testicles 
and penis, is, therefore, an unquestionable state of 
disease ; for, since both are so closely and intimately 
dependant on each other, the least want of exactness 
in their adaptation might be the cause of impotence. 
Whatever be the mode in which the deviation from 
the healthy and natural action of the parts is first 
induced, it is not difficult to trace its inevitable effect 
in the production of seminal debility, and the ulti- 
mate destruction of sexual power. Irritation, how- 
ever engendered, rapidly propagates itself along the 
urethra, and chronic inflammation of the prostatic 
and most sensitive portion of that canal is rapidly 
.established, and the muscles surrounding the mem- 



Seminal Weakness. 



137 



bra nous division of the urinary passage are sympa- 
thetically affected with irregular spasm. The irrita- 
tion extends itself by continuity of surface to the 
seminal vessels, and even lo the testicles, producing in 
the former unnaiural evacuations, and in the laitex 
an exaggerated, ihin secretion, too rapidly elaborated, 
and therefore, for the puipose of generation, worth- 
less. 

Among individuals so affected, the emission (even 
on attempting intercourse with the sex) is too quickly, 
discharged. Nocturnal pollutions are frequent, 
(indeed these are often the immediate precursors of 
seminal weakness,) or the semen is expelled during 
the evacuation of the bladder and bowels. With 
some there is more or less complete extinction of 
venereal desire, the erections become few and fee- 
ble, incomplete or absolutely impossible. This con-? 
dition of the sexual organs has its appropriate general 
character, analogous to those which are attributable 
to the wilful and determined pollutions of earlier 
youth; the sufferer, now, perhaps too late, sensibly 
alive to the origin of his weakness, becomes timid, 
fearful, careless of the world around him, his mind 
absorbed in the consideration of his malady, until 
the continual presence and recurrence of the same 
train of painful thought involves him in the worst 
form of monomania, or rather the premature child- 
ishness of old age. All the functions of the body 
languish and are deranged, until a complete and 
general degradation sweep, with uncontrolled domi- 
nion, over every power and faculty both of body and 
soul. The seminal fluid may dribble away without 
I pleasure, without erection, without the natural ejacu- 
lation ; and its loss, when occurring in this manner,, 

12* 



140 Seminal Weakness. 



■ something: in his Ireast- 



Lurks the dirk secret, not to be expressed ; 
fhtre must it lurk, theie gall h s wretched life, 
Not be imparted to his b^som w.fe." 

The nuptial bed, instead of teeming with a hal- 
lowed, extatic, and indefinable delight, is converted 
into a scene of blended mortification, disappoint- 
ment, and suppressed anger ; and it is now that the 
mistaken bride is first penetrated wilh these suspi- 
cions, which are too soon corroborated by subse- 
quent experience ; and if, under such circumstances, 
the unfortunate female fall a prey to some artful 
seducer, her offence is not altogether without a justi- 
fication, and the injured husband may accuse himself 
as the cause of her unhappy deviation. 

The various effects that the urethral discharges 
have upon the animal frame, depend greatly on the 
influence they have on the mind ; in some, nocturnal 
emissions lay the foundation of seminal weakness 
and gleet, and cases occur, where the system, hav- 
ing lonn; laboured under the influence of nocturnal 
emissions, feels more powerfully than others, all 
lhat nervous irritation which usually accompanies a 
profuse discharge, of die semen; proving Leyond 
doubt, the existence of chronic debility; for, what 
has little effect in one constitution, produces symp- 
toms in another extremely harrassing both to the 
body and mind ; and thus a complex derangement 
arises, the combined result of a concatenation of 
events, that may be traced even to mathematical 
precision, to this debilitating ; for we are led to infer, 
that seminal weakness precedes this nervous de- 
rangement ; and to me it is evident, that when ner- 
vous debility exists, the nocturnal emissions are 



Seminal Weakness. 



141 



increased ; and the repetition of them unquestiona- 
bly weakens the vital energy, and after an indefinite 
period, predisposes the sensibility of the cerebral 
organ to morbid irritation. Thus, from intercourse 
with the nerves, the general system is disturbed, and 
body and mind rendered susceptible to the caprice 
of that vicissitude of irritation, whose universality of 
influence can only be described by those who have 
felt its agency. Nor is the effect of this influence 
the offspring of a fervid or depressed imagination, 
on the contrary, a class of painful and distressing 
diseases are originated, which, in lheir progress have 
a great effect on organization ; and this morbid irri- 
tability more frequently attends on constitutions pre- 
viously debilitated by venereal excesses, or more 
frequently still, by the baneful habit of Onanism, by 
which the parts are not only so weakened, but are 
also rendered so irritable, and so easily, by habit, 
excited by mental influences, that the slightest sti- 
mulus is sufficient to call them into action, and 
thereby produce a discharge of semen. 

In some instances, the power of the male genitals- 
is not altogether destroyed ; nay, impregnation may 
occur in a healthy female, from the laborious em- 
braces of one whose constitutional vigour is almost 
entirely destroyed. But the offspring — can it be 
rationally expected, that the child of such a father 
should be otherwise than puny, feeble, and predispos- 
ed to those diseases, which, under the most favoura- 
ble circumstances, destroy so large a proportion of 
children under five years of age ? We know that 
there are diseases peculiar to childhood. The pro- 
cess of dentition is accompanied by much irritation, 
and sweeps, annually, its thousands into the grave* 



142 Seminal Weakness. 

Measles, hooping cough, croup, and most especially 
inflammatory affections of the lungs and mucous 
membranes of the bronchical cavities, form the sad 
catalogue of evils, through which, as through an 
armed troop, the poor little sufferers are doomed to 
run, and only the minority pass the ordeal.* Is consti- 
tutional vigour of no importance in enabling children 
to resist harmlessly the certain attacks of those dis- 
eases to which they are undoubtedly obnoxious? 
The seminal secretion, which in a certain sense com- 
municates life, or is at least the agent, without which 
the embryotic rudiments of a being cannot assume 
active and progressive vitality, is itself alive; and 
if, from excessive evacuation of this fluid, seminal 
weakness ensued, it is not unreasonable, but highly 
philosophical, to suppose, that in the event of pro- 
creation occurring from actual sexual congress, the 
offspring will bear enstamped upon it the physical 
characters derivable from parentaldebility. 

As illustrative of the truth of this position, I may 
observe, from the days of Aristotle, it has been re- 
marked, that illegitimate children are frequently 
endowed with great genius and valour, and both 
ancient and modern history certainly affords many 
such examples. The circumstance has been com- 
monly ascribed to the impetuosity of both parents, 
during their embraces. Hercules, Romulus, Alex- 
ander, Themistocles, Jugurtha, King Arthur, Wil- 
liam the Conqueror, Homer, Demosthenes, and 
many others, were illegitimate ; the most ancient 
families have sprung from the left-handed offspring 

* lam indebted to Dr D. M. Hogan, of this City* for very 
vabmble inLrniation relative to the treatment of diseases of 
children. 



Seminal Weakness, 



143 



of princes. The worthiest captains, best wits, 
bravest spirits in English annals, have been base- 
born. Cardan, in his Subtleties, gives a reason — 
" These are more noble and powerful of body and 
mind, chiefly from the vehemence of the sexual act 
that begat them." Probably their superior energy 
may be attributed to the strength of parental con- 
stitution, which is alt for which I contend ; the 
weak and delicate not being so likely to become the 
prey of unlawful and forbidden love. 

If these positions be correct, and who is so hardy 
as to impugn their accuracy, founded most evidently 
on ihe common sense observation of mankind, it fol- 
lows, that there are, and may be, varieties of seminal 
weakness, (originating most commonly, if not exclu- 
sively, in sensual excess and especially in self-pollu- 
tion,) which though not absolutely precluding the 
performance of the sexual act, may render that act 
unfruitful, or terminating in the production of pro- 
geny, to whom a sickly, short-lived existence, is 
rather a curse than a blessing — born only to rouse 
the sensibilities of maternal fondness. 



" For us they sicken, and for us they die." 

Forgotten indiscretions, the sins of early youth flit 
in bitter recollection athwart the keenly sensitive 
conscience ; the poor unconscious babe, upon whose 
innocent smile love had rivilted its tender fetters, in 
the mean time sleeps well ; the flowers that deck its 
coffin are only flowers, but there is one to whose 
awakened heart those simple memorials are keen as 
the blade of the polished dagger. 



144 Impotence and Sterility. 



IMPOTENCE AND STERILITY. 

The term " Impotence" is applied as relative to 
that inability or incapacity to the performance of 
the sexual act, which may arise from a variety of 
causes, but from none so frequently as the excesses 
of sensualism, more especially the secret, vicious 
and solitary indulgence of self-pollution. It is im- 
portant, in a practical point of view, that we do not 
confound this condition of the generative system 
with sterility; inasmuch as a male who is sterile, 
or a barren female, may possess a perfect aptitude 
for coition, though, for all the purposes of procrea- 
tion, absolutely incapable. In Impotence there is a 
temporary or permanent destruction of those powers 
which are absolutely essential for generative pur- 
poses. Sterility may, therefore, be defined as in- 
ability to propagate the species, though not to effect 
the sexual congress ; while Impotency in either sex, 
whether natural or acquired, whether as the result 
of disease or malformation, entirely precludes its 
performance. Impotence resulting from physical 
imperfection of the sexual organs is mostly incura- 
ble, but when originating in such disorders of the 
urinary or genital apparatus, as are traceable to irri- 
tation or inflammation of those structures, or to con- 
ditions however produced, thence resulting, such as 
thickening of the bladder, enlargement of the pros- 
tate gland or testicles, wasting of the penis, espe- 
cially long continued gleets and stricture. Our first 
efforts are naturally directed to the removal of these 
proximate causes of Impotence ; and if the habit be 
still indulged, the baneful, ultimate, or primary cause 



Impotence and Sterility, 145 

of so severe a deprivation. If, under these circum- 
stances) Nature does not readily reassume her 
wonted functions. If there be remaining debility, it 
is necessary to invigorate the frame, by the employ- 
ment, not merely of those diffusible stimuli which 
act generally upon the whole system, but by the 
administration of remedies which are known to act 
immediately upon ihe generative organs. If there 
be present, excessive irritability, it is necessary to 
employ such remedies as tend to diminish irritation 
in the morbidly sensitive organs. 

The causes of Impotence in man arise from two 
sources — from vicious mal-formation of the genitals,or 
from want of power ; but among women, Impotence 
can only depend on mal-formation, either natural or 
acquired. These causes are more commonly ob- 
served in man than in the other sex ; and this is 
easily accounted for by the greater part the male has 
to perform in the nuptial congress. This is evident 
from the phenomena which gives the virile member 
the form and disposition proper for erection, the 
introduction of the organ, and the ejaculation of the 
semen, which are effected by a violent and compli- 
cated action, requiring a concurrence of many indis- 
pensable conditions ; the organs not only contracting 
spasmodically to effect the expulsion of the male 
fluid, but all the body participating at this moment 
in a strange convulsion, as though nature at the in- 
stant forgot every other function. It will be obvious 
that the treatment must admit of wide modification, 
as Impotence may be absolute or relative, constitu- 
tional or local, direct or indirect, transient or appa- 
rently permanent. Many defects of conformation 
are sufficient, more or less, completely to interfere 

13 



146 Impotence and Sterility. 

with the sexual act. Among men, preternatural 
length, closure, or adhesion of the foreskin, consti* 
tuting phymosis, (which may be either congenital or 
the result of disease ;) cancerous or schirrous en- 
largement of the prostate is frequent in advanced 
life, and forms another obvious physical bar to copu- 
lation. Among females, adhesion of the sides of 
the vagina is not so common as an imperforate 
state of the hymen, which occasionally closes so 
completely the entrance to the internal organs, that 
the menstrual secretion has been known lo accumu- 
late behind that membrane, and for want of the na- 
tural outlet, the cavity of the womb has gradually 
assumed a distension closely similating that of 
pregnancy. 

Some from constitutional frigidity are impotent. 
Thus we read, that Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, 
only admitted her husband's embraces once a month, 
and then solely in relation to posterity. It is doubtful 
whether, under such circumstances, her sense of duty 
would atone for the absence of inclination. Exces- 
sive venery and the profuse discharges olfluor albus, 
or the whites, are susceptible of completely destroy- 
ing all power of excitement in women. Hence 
prostitutes, from over stimulation of the generative 
organs, seldo?n conceive. Transient Impotence is 
often the result of mere apprehension. Too eager 
desires, too ardent an imagination ; the extatic 
effect produced by the sight of a beloved object, ex- 
treme nervous susceptibility, are often sufficient to 
produce temporary Impotence. It is not unusual to 
meet with instances of married people becoming 
quite indifferent to each other's embraces. Some 
patients of mine confessed to me their inability to 



Impotence and Sterility, 147 

complete the sexual act with their wives, unless by 
an effort of the fancy — imagination conjured up the 
form of some more voluptuous female. Physical defect 
may constitute the cause of Impotence, but more 
frequently there is neither organic defect nor local 
disease, the affection is a mere nervous suspension 
of power, which is soon removed under proper 
management. Even this has its wise ordination. 
Any individual, however nervous in his physical 
capacity, if he anticipates with too intense eagerness, 
intercourse wilh a beloved object, will seldom per- 
form the act well; even among the most ardent and 
powerful it occurs, as many have confessed, that 
after waiting, time after time, for opportunity, when 
that has arrived, they have not had the power to take 
advantage of it. A nervous anxiety, a tremulous 
delight, absolutely indefinable, has completely thrown 
prostrate all power, and the object of passion has 
been saved from perdilion by its paralysing all the 
fire and ardency of animal desire. If the imagina- 
tion wanders from the task, temporary Impotence is 
the result ; and many writers are firmly of opinion, 
that impregnation is often impeded from the pre- 
sence of ideas which interfere with the due perform- 
ance of the generative act. 

Sterne has happily commented on this point, in one 
of his most popular works, introducing his maternal 
parent, as asking, at a most untimely moment, whe- 
ther his " father had not forgotten to wind up the 
clock." His views are strictly physiological. Such 
is the power of the moral over the physical state of 
man. Many impotent persons are cured by quieting 
the imagination, and strengthening the constitution, 
by invigorating the general health, and the genital 



148 Impotence and Sterility. 

organs. We are acquainted with no function of the 
animal mechanism so specially dependant upon the 
mind as this ; for, though sexual intercourse is a com- 
pound act of the body and the mind, its essential en- 
ergy, its peculiar stimuli proceeds from the mind, and 
according to the exciting energy of the mind is the act 
performed. Thus from a compound act of indescriba- 
ble pleasure and languor, organic beings are endowed 
with power to produce other similar to themselves, or 
rather let me add, an essential part of themselves is 
separated in the act; the power of that separation 
being concentrated in the generative organs. The mo- 
ment the semen has passed, from the greater exertion 
used by the male, languor and depression succeed, and 
at this period his office is complete, and a new and 
complicated arrangement takes place in the female; 
but what is the character of that arrangement which 
actually takes place within the female uterus, when 
after experiencing the most delightful and ex- 
quisite of all sensual pleasure — being properly im- 
pregnated, and on the eve of giving form and exist- 
ence to her offspring, we yet know not. 

Impotence in the male, may arise then from a wide 
diversity of conditions. Incapacity of erection is 
generally referable to self-pollution. Impotence 
arising from a want of power of reteniion in the 
seminal vessels, induced by a morbid susceptibility 
of those vessels, and brought about in like manner 
by a persistence in the same vicious practice ; Im- 
potence from inability of retention resulting from 
repletion of these vessels, all demand a variety of 
treatment peculiar to the precise condition of the 
parts. Impotence from mental influences has also 
;ts appropriate management. Exclusive of this, the 



Impotence and Sterility. 149 

generative infirmity under consideration, though 
occasionally aiising from simple disease, is asciiba- 
ble, in by far the greater majority of instances, to 
the excesses of sensualism, either with women, or 
more commonly still, from that vile excess, to which 
such frequent allusion has been made in these pages. 
Long protracted chastity, or continence, is not to be 
overlooked as a cause of Impotence, the very reverse 
of the degrading habit of self-pollulion, it is not only 
comparatively rare, but offers in ils very nature the 
indications of cure. But that long continued de- 
bauchery, whether with women or by masturbation, 
is to be assigned as the most common and prominent 
of the causes of Impotence, is a fact admitted by all 
systematic writers, and amply and painfully con- 
firmed by my own experience. Mons.Pinel, observes, 
" T/te impotence caused by the latter excess, reduces 
youth to the nullity of old age, and is too often 
incurable? Fortunately the records of a numerous 
list of cases prove, that recovery of the powers of 
manhood is not (under judicious management) so 
altogether hopeless as might seem to be the fact, 
trusting only to the observations of those medical 
men who have made these subjects their peculiar, 
and exclusive study. 

Impotence is often caused by debility of the 
genital organs, induced by precocious venereal en- 
joyments, or by the unrestrained abuse of the deli- 
cate structures in any method, that tends to produce 
repeated and severe evacuations of the seminal fluid. 
If Impotence result from self-pollution, there is a 
want of erection; and should a seminal emission 
take place, the semen does not possess its prolific 

13* 



150 Impotence and Sterility, 

power, and ihus the man is at once impotent and 
sterile. 

This formof Impotence is truly deplorable ; and un- 
fortunately, it is ihe most prevalent variety ; never- 
theless the author has cured many persons labouiing 
under this distressing complication, although several 
involuntary diurnal as well as nocturnal emissions 
have regularly or cured without amorous impulse, next 
to self 'pollution. Excessive venery is a frequent 
cause of Impotence as well as of Sterility among 
the male sex. This is a frequent cause of want of 
offspring in young married persons. In these cases 
the semen may escape without the aid of the ejacu- 
latory muscles, is imperfect in quality, and devoid of 
power, until the health is improved; or, if impreg- 
nation ensue, the child undoubtedly partakes of the 
debility of the parent, soon to be consigned to a 
premature grave, the victim of that nameless atro- 
phy, or wasting decay, which hurries thousands of 
infants, annually, to the tomb. In these cases, the 
male parent generally suffers from inflammation of 
the seminal vesicles, or there is a seminal weakness, 
with more or less involuntary discharge. 

The surest means, by which sound and vigorous 
children may be engendered, is a good constitution, 
unenfeebled by excessive waste of those powers, 
which, in their assemblage, constitute the manifesta- 
tion of the living principle. It is admitted, not 
merely by philosophic writers, who have speculated 
deeply upon the subject, but by all who have paid 
the least attention to the facts connected with such 
a statement, that not merely the physical but the 
moral dispositions of the parents, are transmitted by 
generation ; hence, if a sound mind, in a sound body, 



Impotence and Sterility. 151 

be the first, greatest and most lasting blessing, and 
its deprivation or absence the greatest possible curse r 
how imperatively necessary is the obligation to cal- 
culate closely the tendency of vicious indulgences, 
to avoid the contamination of depraved habits, or to 
correct and elude the consequences of that debility 
already imposed upon the generative organs by sen- 
sual excess. Impotence and Sterility are usually 
the results of wilful imprudence. Mal-formation is 
a direct interposition of creative wisdom ; its occur- 
rence is comparatively rare; but failing power is not 
only exceedingly common, but generally constitutes 
a self-inflicted evil. Diseased and delicate parents 
procreate diseased and weakly offspring. The same 
results are observed in plants and animals. Can it 
be supposed that the physical powers and the sym- 
pathies of a beautiful woman, of an excellent con- 
stitution, are in unison with those of a man whose 
best energies were long ago expended in the prema- 
ture and illicit excesses of lawless excitement, whose 
youth has been a hurried history of wild enjoyment, 
whose passions have been lashed past the natural 
powers of his bodily organization, and who now 
brings his decrepid efforts as a worthless offering at 
the shrine of matrimonial sanctity ? Or, worse still 
— is there a mockery more deep, more bitter, than 
that desolation of spirit which an affectionate woman 
must feel, on rinding she clasps entwined within her 
circling embrace, the mere wreck of sensualism ! 
the horrible victim of self-pollution ! the creature, 
who, having trained his imagination and bodily 
powers to mere fancied enjoyments, is now deprived 
almost, if not entirely, of the capability of resuming 
the actions for which his generative organs were 



152 Impotence and Sterility. 

destined. Woman's scorn must be the more intense, 
because, from the very nature of her own position, 
she is precluded from giving vent to her feelings of 
anger and vexation. Love cannot be reciprocal in 
such cases. Animal or organic impulse will prefer 
that which is more accordant with itself; even brutes 
prefer males which are possessed of vigour, power 
and beauty ; and this instinct is implanted by nature 
in all animals. Whatever perversion civilization 
may affect in our feelings or manners, it cannot ex- 
tinguish this instinct. And this is an eminently 
wise ordination, as tending to the perpetuity of a 
healthy race of human beings. If sensualism have 
impaired the powers, not of both parents, but of one 
only, the punishment of the offence is either sterility 
or debility, or pain, disease and death, transmitted 
to the children, and reflected back with sorrow upon 
the parents. Impotence, then, is the last crowning 
scourge of sexual imperfection, and demands for its 
removal the most cautious application of the resour- 
ces of the healing art. The treatment of the chronic 
diseases of the generative system, has been greatly 
neglected, and signally misunderstood. The efficacy 
of well directed efforts has been much mistrusted in 
this matter ; and it is remarkable, that both the pa- 
tient and the practitioner contribute to these impedi- 
ments ; for, as the latter has been accustomed to see 
his remedies speedy in their effects, he is himself 
discouraged if they do not immediately produce the 
desired benefit. Nor is it any wonder that the pa- 
tient becomes incredulous of the promised relief, 
neither of them recollecting, that the morbid states 



Impotence and Sterility. 153 

have been slowly produced, and cannot, therefore, 
be speedily changed.* 

Self-pollution, the frequent cause of sexual Im- 
potence and Sterility, is generally the habit of the 
best years of youthful life; and ils deadening im- 
press often tells, with deplorable certainty, long after 
the baneful habit lias been relinquished. Time 
must, therefore, be afforded for the rectification of 
that artificial state, into which the powers of the- 
system have been wantonly plunged. It is evidently 
the absence of fixed principles in our pathology of 
the slow diseases of the generative system, that has 
given such unbridled license to quackery. There 
has always existed a vagueness of opinion respect- 
ing their nature, and an unsettled doctrine as to the 
most rational methods to be adopted for their mitiga- 
tion and cure. The communication of disordered 
action is an inevitable result of indulgence in any 
mode of sensualism, either excessive or contrary to 
the <Mfd.e r of nature; and the constitution of our 
being, and the nature of that perverted action 
may be readily anticipated. In fact we see it 
exemplified in excessive irrilabilily of the bladder 
and seminal vesicles, producing incapability for re- 
tention, disease of the spinal marrow and brain-, 
spasm of the urethra and stricture, an effeminate 

* It is to be deplored that Empirics are so reckless, that they 
employ the most •* invigorating and stimulating medicine," both 
externally and internally, to cause immediate erections, und to 
afford momentary gratification to their deluded patients. A case 
is recorded in the Philosophical Transactions of 1843, in the 25th 
Nurnber, page 35, where one of those depredators on human life, 
administered an internal medicine, and also made use of an- ex- 
ternal application, which produced instant priajji$m y and sub- 
sequently a total paralysis of the organ. 



154 Impotence and Sterility. 

flaccidity of the penis, testicles and scrotum. Can 
it be expected these organs should be capable, under 
such circumstances, of fulfilling their appropriate 
offices in the task of procreation? — most assuredly 
not. Where Impotence is consequent upr<n that 
banejul propensity, which cannot be sufficiently 
stigmatized, its extent of severity is far greater 
than when produced by excessive indulgence with 
women ; because the vital fluid that could have im- 
proved the stamina of the system has been lost 
without satisfaction ; consequently, no gratification 
of the mind has been had to counterpoise, to com- 
pensate, and in some measure to repair the expendi- 
ture of power. 

The man, who from his anxiety to indulge to the 
utmost his libidinous propensities, seeks for variety 
among women, may certainly find in such variety a 
new stimulus sufficient for the occasion, and may be 
able to accomplish more frequent repetitions of the 
sexual act than the sober married man who isTaithful 
to one ; but we cannot over-look the fact, that this, 
undoubtedly, is accomplished at the expense of a 
corresponding amount of unnaturally excited energy, 
and the ultimate results of such efforts tell with 
fearful and tremendous horrors, upon the helpless 
and debilitated votary of greedy pleasure. The 
nightly partner of a husband's bed, silently offers 
only that gratification which is demanded by the 
sexual organs, when fully charged with the seminal 
fluid, and impatient for relief. To such a man the 
stimulus of variety is unsought; contemned, for- 
bidden, as contrary not merely to all laws, human 
and divine, but as directly opposed to his well-being, 
lo the maintenance of his animal organization in 



Impotence and Sterility. 155 

heallh, strength and usefulness. Here then, the 
natural laws of the physical constitution harmonize 
most admirably with the higher sanctions of morality. 
The actual amount of enjoyment realized by the 
temperate, is, in the long run, far greater ; power is 
maintained until old age, and a vigorous offspring is 
engendered, while the hasty, violent and forced gra- 
tification of the sensualist, though/ vivid for a mo- 
ment, are succeeded by that worst form of helpless- 
ness, insatiable desire appended to diseased and 
powerless organs. The draining of the seminal 
fluid, which occurs either from excessive indulgence 
in venereal gratifications, or from solitary vice, is not 
equally great in every instance. There are some 
individuals who are not rendered absolutely, but only 
partially impotent. They can accomplish the sexual 
act occasionally and with severe effort, to the dis- 
gust, doubtlessly, of the female, or they are tolera- 
bly able, yet unprolific. Their powers are weakened, 
not altogether destroyed. These patients have re- 
sources left in surgical skill, which if expended in 
contending against improper or unskilful treatment, 
are lost for ever. The debility produced by mastur- 
bation starts a difficulty in the choice of remedies 
which does not occur in other cases, to excite, yet 
not irritate ; this is the poin> of divergency, where 
cautious science leaves blundering quackery to pur- 
sue her blind injurious course. It is a law of ani- 
mal organization, that when motion is increased, the 
increase is most considerable in those parts which 
are most susceptible, and these, among sensualists, 
are the parts of generation ; therefore, the effects of 
irritating remedies are most sensibly and instantly 
felt in those parts, enforcing the utmost circumspec- 



154 Impotence and Sterility. 

flaccidity of the penis, testicles and scrotum. Can 
it be expected these organs should be capable, under 
such circumstances, of fulfilling their appropriate 
offices in the task of procreation? — most assuredly 
not. Where Impotence is consequent upr,n that 
banejul propensity, which cannot be sufficiently 
stigmatized, its extent of severity is far greater 
than when produced by excessive indulgence with 
women ; because the vital fluid that could have im- 
proved the stamina of tl.e system has been lost 
without satisfaction; consequently, no gratification 
of the mind has been had to counterpoise, to com- 
pensate, and in some measure to repair the expendi- 
ture of power. 

The man, who from his anxiety to indulge to the 
utmost his libidinous propensities, seeks for variety 
among women, may certainly find in such variety a 
new stimulus sufficient for the occasion, and may be 
able to accomplish more frequent repetitions of the 
sexual act than the sober married man who is Faithful 
to one ; but we cannot over-look the fact, that this, 
undoubtedly, is accomplished at the expense of a 
corresponding amount of unnaturally excited energy, 
and the ultimate results of such efforts tell with 
fearful and tremendous horrors, upon the helpless 
and debilitated votary of greedy pleasure. The 
nightly partner of a husband's bed, silently offers 
only that gratification which is demanded by the 
sexual organs, when fully charged with the seminal 
fluid, and impatient for relief. To such a man the 
stimulus of variety is unsought; contemned, for- 
bidden, as contrary not merely to all laws, human 
and divine, but as directly opposed to his well-being, 
%o the maintenance of his animal organization in 






Impotence and Sterility. 155 

health, strength and usefulness. Here then, the 
natural laws of the physical constitution harmonize 
most admirably with the higher sanctions of morality. 
The actual amount of enjoyment realized by the 
temperate, is, in the long run, far greater ; power is 
maintained until old age, and a vigorous offspring is 
engendered, while the hasty, violent and forced gra- 
tification of the sensualist, though/ vivid for a mo- 
ment, are succeeded by that worst form of helpless- 
ness, insatiable desire appended to diseased and 
powerless organs. The draining of the seminal 
fluid, which occurs either from excessive indulgence 
in venereal gratifications, or from solitary vice, is not 
equally great in every instance. There are some 
individuals who are not rendered absolutely, but only 
partially impotent. They can accomplish the sexual 
act occasionally and with severe effort, to the dis- 
gust, doubtlessly, of the female, or ihey are tolera- 
bly able, yet unprolific. Their powers are weakened, 
not altogether destroyed. These patients have re* 
sources left in surgical skill, which if expended in 
contending against improper or unskilful treatment, 
are lost for ever. The debility produced by mastur- 
bation starts a difficulty in the choice of remedies 
which does not occur in other cases, to excite, yet 
not irritate ; this is the point of divergency, where 
cautious science leaves blundering quackery to pur* 
sue her blind injurious course. It is a law of ani- 
mal organization, that when motion is increased, the 
increase is most considerable in those parts which 
are most susceptible, and these, among sensualists, 
are the parts of generation ; therefore, the effects of 
irritating remedies are most sensibly and instantly 
felt in those parts, enforcing the utmost circumspec- 



156 Impotence and Sterility. 

tion, not merely in the selection, but in the adminis- 
tration and employment of medicinal agents. Thus 
Sterility may, in some cases, be only apparent, 
although it be perfectly true, that in a few instances, 
the uterine system of the female may be insensible 
to the seminal stimulus of a particular individual, 
yet capable of being acted upon by another ; the 
lapse of a little time is often sufficient (if there have 
been no debilitating causes in operation before mar- 
riage,) to dissipate groundless fear, and such being 
the truth, it becomes doubly important, not only that 
proper treatment be adopted, where absolutely de- 
manded, but that science should determine whether 
any or what kind of interference be really necessary. 
Offspring is frequently denied to newly-married per- 
sons from eagerness in its pursuit. The consequent 
ces of excessive venery in those whom warm pas- 
sion has united in its indissoluble tie, amount only 
to the defeat of their wishes. Celsus, remarked, 
upon this subject, more than eighteen centuries ago, 
" Rarus concubitus corpus exciiat frequeus solvit? 
Which may be freely translated— " The bodily 
powers are excited by occasional coition, by frequent 
repetition they become relaxed ;" and, consequently, 
unprolific; or, as the poet has expressed the same 
sentiment — 

" While temperate pleasure spurs the lazy Vood, 
Excess unstrmgs the nerves and d.ies the flood." 

And so truly it is within the experience of many, 
that when the first warm anxiety for offspring, and 
its corresponding efforts, have passed away and sub- 
sided, the blessing is granted ta less passionate, 
exciting, and frequent embraces. 



Impotence and Sterility. 157 

The ancient Physicians were right in their gene- 
ral rule : the longer parties abstain the more quickly 
they generate. Almost all physiologists now agree, 
that the retention of semen for some few days, or 
temporary abstinence from coition, is necessary for 
generation. 

During my own practice, many persons have con- 
sulted me on account of want of family, ivhich en- 
tirely arose from this cause. Such cases require great 
delicacy in their investigation to learn their nature, 
when science, caution, and sympathy are duly ex- 
erted. Conjugal, domestic, and social inconvenien- 
ces must always be avoided ; and it is scarcely to 
be observed, because of the obvious truth, that ex- 
cessive sexual enjoyment relaxes both parties, and 
may, even in the married state, defeat its own end, 
be unfruitful from too frequent repetition, and bring 
on atony, weakness, and debility of the generative 
organs, which may end in sterility in the female, and 
impotence in the male. If these things be so (and 
who will dare to contravene their truth, founded as 
it is on the ordinary every day observation of man- 
kind ?) it follows that there are, and may be, varieties 
of seminal weakness, originating most commonly 
in nocturnal emissions, and these dependant in many 
instances (but not invariably so) in the unnatural 
practice of self-pollution, to which such ample 
reference has been made in the foregoing pages. 
That these emissions lead to the most deplorable 
consequences, independently of the injury done to 
the generative functions is indisputable. The most 
studious people, and those of a splenetic cast, are 
subject to this infirmity, and the discharge of semen is 
commonly so considerable, that they fall into a slow 

14 



158 Impotence and Sterility. 

wasting consumption. A Roman physician, (whose 
opinion is supported by John of Acharus, author of 
a work composed for the Emperor,) observes — "If 
nocturnal emissions continue any time, the necessary 
consequences are consumption and death, for the 
most balsamic part of the humour and animal spirits 
are dissipated ; the whole body falls away, and par- 
ticularly the back ; the patients become feeble, dry 
and pale, they languish in slow melancholy agony." 
Let this antiquated, yet terrifically correct portraiture, 
deter the thoughtless, from practices which lead to 
such a state ; and those in whom it is commencing, 
let not incipient evil be deemed unworthy of their 
most serious consideration. 

Sterility, however, is frequently the vice of the 
female organs, under circumstances which preclude 
its possibility on the part of the male. It may de- 
pend, in women, either upon mal-formation, which 
in reference to the internal and hidden structure, is 
more common than is generally supposed ; or it may 
be dependent upon some imperfect action of the 
generative organs. In some instances, the ovaria 
are wanting, or too small; the fallopian tubes may 
be impervious, or the uterus itself unnaturally small. 
With this state of parts there are associated, a want 
of due development of the breasts, and the sexual 
desire inconsiderable. But, in by far the greater 
majority of barren women, the organs of generation 
seem to be well formed, nevertheless the action is 
imperfect or disordered. The menstrual secretion 
is either obstructed or sparing, or the reverse defect 
is predominant. They are troubled with profuse 
discharges, either occurring at the natural period or 
at irregular intervals, perhaps alternating with copious 



Impotence and Sterility. 159 

mucal secretion, of an acrimonious and whitish 
glairy fluid. It is extremely rare for conception to 
occur unless a woman menstruate regularly ; and, 
on the contrary, correct menstruation generally indi- 
cates a capability of impregnation on the part of the 
female. Women who are very corpulent are often 
barren ; for their corpulence either depends upon 
want of activity in the ovaria (castrated animals 
generally becoming fat,) or it exists as a mark of 
weakness of the general system, and of the uterine 
organs in particular. This state of weakness and 
exhaustion of the generative system (however in- 
duced) is unquestionably a frequent cause of female 
sterility ; and among the causes which entail loss of 
vital and reproductive energy, excessive indulgence 
is one of the most prominent. Hence, as before 
observed, prostitutes seldom conceive, not alone 
because the frequent repetition of the act blunts 
sensibility to enjoyment, but also because of the 
atony of the generative power. Must it be added, 
that vicious indulgences and solitary practices find 
their way to the chamber of unmarried girls. The 
fact is unfortunately too well attested. I have known 
an instance where this horrible practice was com- 
municated, by a depraved domestic, to a family of 
girls ; and in another case, that fell under my cog- 
nizance, the inmates of a lady's school were all, 
without exception, devoted to this depraved and des- 
tructive propensity. Now, it is impossible to con- 
ceive that any single cause of sterility, in after life, 
can operate with more deadly certainty than this, to say 
nothing of the horribly wasting forms of consump- 
tive and other diseases which are thereby produced^ 
and which indeed often hurry young women to the- 



160 Impotence and Sterility. 

grave before the cause becomes developed ; and 
previously to their entrance into the state, and upon 
the duties of married life, women of adult age and 
more especially the young, whose constitution is as 
yet unformed and expanded, in pursuing the guilty 
career of vicious stimulation of the genital organs? 
entail upon themselves the most horrible diseases, of 
which sterility is the least formidable. 

None but those who have devoted themselves to 
the treatment of sexual infirmities, have the slightest 
conception of the extent and prevalency of these 
flagrant enormities. Besides the consequences com- 
mon to both sexes, females, devoted to libidinous and 
solitary pollutions, are more particularly exposed 
to hysterical paroxisms, to incurable jaundice, cramp 
in the side of the stomach, acute pains in the head, 
to fluor albus, that acrid wasting discharge, scarcely 
compatible with the healthy functions of the uterus ; 
to descent and protrusion of the womb, and to all 
the infirmities of body and mind inseparable from 
these combined conditions. As the result of this, 
the organs themselves become irritable and inflamed, 
engendering a train of filthy thought, that is con- 
cealed with difficulty, or that expends itself in the 
betrayal of so much the weakness of the sex, as to 
draw down our pity and indifference, rather than 
love, passion and respect. A common symptom in 
both sexes, and which is to be noticed here, as it is 
more frequent among women, is the indifference 
which this infamous practice leaves for the lawful 
gratifications of marriage ; and hence, the disinclina- 
tion of some women to enter that state, is not always 
insincere or ascribable to affectation. Not only does 
this indifference induce some to maintain a life of 



Impotence and Sterility. 161 

celebacy, but even accompanies them to the nuptial 
bed. 

In the collection of Dr. Beckker's, a female ac* 
knowledges, that the practice of self-pollution had 
gained so complete an ascendancy over her senses, 
that she absolutely felt repugnance to the natural 
and lawful means afforded by the Author of Nature 
for the relief of natural desire. My own practice 
has rendered me familiar with similar examples. 

How intensely important that Parents and Guar- 
dians should reflect upon the source whence the 
vilest habits may be introduced, with secret impu- 
nity, among their infant charge of either sex; if they 
may be deceived in the choice of those to whom 
they entrust the important task of forming the minds 
and dispositions of their pupils, what is their not to 
fear from their proximity to domestics, w 7 ho are ex- 
amined chiefly for the display of their corporeal 
talents, and are frequently hired without its being' 
known whether their morals are irreproachable, or 
their minds not grossly polluted and vicious ? In 
the majority of these deplorable cases, a servant 
maid, gross, luxurious, and previously unaccustomed 
to abundance of good food, has been the guilty insti- 
gator of a propensity, which, however her coarse 
organization might bear with apparent impunity, has 
produced effects of the most deplorable character, on 
the sensitive frame of a creature whose habits, 
modes of thought, reading, and powers of fancy, 
render her the easy prey of a facinating and over- 
whelming delusion. 

What are the indications which justify parental 
fear in reference to either sex ? We have passed 
Htider review the forms of disease resulting so 

14* 



162 Impotence and Sterility. 

frequently, solely from sensualism. The tact with 
which the victims of self-pollution elude detection, 
and evade inquiry, is inconceivable. Why does the 
moody youth court unreasonable solitude ? Let 
your vigilence be unceasing in reference to the dis- 
posal of those moments preceding sleep and rising, 
for it is then that the youthful criminal may most 
probably be surprised in the fact. The marked ex- 
aggeration of feigned and immediate sleep is one 
indication ; on approaching the bed, its inmate 
covered with perspiration, or with reddened features, 
quickened pulse and breathing, and heated skin ; is 
manifestly in a predicament which the temperature 
of the room, or the warmth of the bed-clothes, will 
not naturally and speedily produce , if on their re- 
moval their be marks of recent evacuation, the fact 
is made out, if otherwise, silence will not pain the 
mind of the virtuous. If these stains be frequent, 
we may assure ourselves they are the indirect results 
of masturbation, and closely identified with a weak 
and irritable condition of the seminal vessels. Dis- 
colouration, a faded dry condition of the skin, lan- 
guor, the look of unrefreshed fatigue on rising from 
bed, disposition to indulgence in bed in the morning, 
are among the suspicious signs, which alone, or in 
combination with other circumstances, point to this 
deplorable habit. If a marked consumptive diathesis 
be not attributable to clearly defined, obvious and 
natural causes ; if no hereditary predisposition be 
traceable, nor the results of neglected inflammation, in- 
sufficient nutriment, prolonged study, violent and long 
continued mental emotions of a depressing kind, if the 
subject of our anxieties become weak, emaciated and 
diseased, spite of healthy and sufficient food, moderate 



Impotence and Sterility* 163 

exercise, and the absence of the known and com- 
monly received provocatives of disease; if, more 
particularly, there be that marked and special aspect 
of the countenance, attributable to masturbation ; 
that "peculiar walk" which, as we have seen, is 
sufficient to indicate the sensualist, even in the street 
— taking all these things into consideration, we may 
almost certainly conclude, we have before us the 
victim of this solitary and baneful indulgence. But 
of proofs avowal is the most difficult of acquisition. 
To demand that admission is not the surest way to 
obtain it. As to some, an obscure, ambiguous or 
enigmatical mode of inquiry is successful ; who if 
addicted to the vice in question, consciousness ena- 
bles them fully to comprehend its exact drift, if 
otherwise, a harmless sence is attached to the words. 
The direct blunt question is sure to be parried ; the 
fact, however, is most easy of elicitation, by those 
whose attention to these matters has endued them 
with the requisite tact, address and management. 
Such acquire the confidence of the suspected ; with 
him they feel perfectly at ease. Not to frow r ns, 
severity, and stern lessons on morality, is the secret 
confided. The fact being established, there are 
three indications closely connected with its abolition 
as a habit. First, to destroy, not the natural sexual, 
but unnaturally morbid, desire ; secondly, to place 
the will in a position of a permanent control over 
mere animal impulse ; and thirdly, to place such 
impediments in the way of repetition, as to render it 
physically as well as morally impossible. 

No combination of human ailments can be so pe- 
culiarly and painfully distressing to a sensitive mind 
as that one hidden and restlessly knawing anxiety, 



164 Impotence and Sterility. 

arising from the deferred hope of offspring. The* 
possession of wealth cannot atone for the absence of 
that which riches cannot purchase, and in vain doe& 
the heart turn in lonely anguish, as- the spring-time 
of existence is rapidly flitting away r to its miserable 
expedients, for the alleviation of this hopeless cor- 
roding sorrow. I remember well, having seen an 
accomplished and beautiful creature, already mar- 
ried a few years, blest with all the world could be- 
stow, yet bursting into tears at the sight of a chubby 
boy borne by a begger woman ; and who does not 
know of the rejoicings that oft occur when some 
wealthy dame has presented her anxious husband 
with the long expected heir to his vast possessions- 
As though the reproproductive act w T ere an almost 
impossible rarity among the more refined and civi- 
lized of the sex ; as though while " peasants bring 
forth in safety," and rear in poverty a numerous 
hardy brood, any valid reason should be assigned 
why this process should be interrupted among the 
higher and more educated classes. If the immuta- 
ble laws of organized nature were more closely ob- 
served and followed, making due allowance for con- 
genital imperfections, there is no reason why any 
one class of women should be found to be more 
prolific than another ; and I doubt not of the cer- 
tainty of repeating my frequent and happy expe- 
rience, in the inculcation of such directions as may 
ensure to many of my anxious correspondents, the 
long-cherished realization of their fondest expecta- 
tions. 

I have analysed the many peculiarities of sexual 
disappointments ; I have furnished correspondences 
to and fro, descending even to minuti.cs> as far as. 



Impotence and Sterility. 165 

.permissible, and I am in possession of others, from 
whicjk in my practice, I derive great assistance with 
regard to sterility on the part of the female, and 
incapacity to impregnate on the side of the male. 
An ampler field is open for " aiding and abetting" 
such ends, than can be expressed in ink, or perhaps 
suspected or believed by the world at large to exist. 
As I am candid to confess, in sending this publica- 
tion forth, desirous as I have been of rendering it 
worthy .of purchase, I never intended it to supersede 
my own usefulness, either to my neighbours or my- 
self; and should I be in existence when these pages 
meet the inspection of a reader solicitous to know 
more than is here set dow T n, the application, either 
viva voce, or otherwise, may not prove a fruitless 
speculation. Men in advanced years, and others of 
younger growth there are, who are sceptical as to 
the usefulness of art in completing the joys of mar- 
ried life ; but if any should be credulous enough to 
believe, that with such assistance effects have fol- 
lowed, on which rested happiness, health, and not 
the least essential desideratum, the maintenance of 
family property ; I fearlessly -am ready to declare, 
that their faith need not in every instance be mis- 
placed. I have been personally and alone engaged 
in the investigation of this subject for a period of 
many years, and 1 have had the satisfaction of effect- 
ing, even with parties tojiom I have never beheld, 
the purposes for winch 1 haye been consulted. 

During the act of copulation, the external and in- 
ternal genital organs of both sexes, which; : are sup- 
plied by nerves from the same source, are excited 
and stimulated ..; the vagina closes tightly on the 
penis, the uterine orifice is in close contact with ths 



166 Impotence and Sterility, 

orifice of the male urethra, the tube or oviduct be- 
comes straightened and erected, and its loose or 
floating extremity {corpus fimbriatum) seizes oh the 
ovary, and allows the male fluid, after its injection 
into the cavity of the womb, to advance through the 
tube to the ovary, by a species of vital attraction or 
suction. The moment the spermatic fluid arrives at 
the ovary which is seized by the extremity of the 
uterine tube, it acts on and vivifies one or more ova 
or ovules and forms the new being, or beings. Such 
is the natural history of the act which originates a 
new being, and it is obvious, that in the detection of 
such deviations from nature as occasionally occur, is 
to be found, the secret which baffles and denies to 
wedded love its legitimate consequences. Those 
deviations are more numerous and complicated than 
at first sight the inexperienced in such researches 
would imagine, and the imperfection once rectified, 
by the judicious interference of art, impregnation is 
almost certain to follow, more especially when the 
female has, seeming of a sudden, relinquished her 
usual capacity for procreation. Such deficiencies, 
though occasionally traceable to the weaker sex, are 
most frequently ascribable to the male, who, though 
in every other respect strong, healthy and robust, is 
yet the subject of such morbid dilitation of the 
seminal vessels as results in premature emissions, 
and though able to perform the mere act of copula- 
tion properly, yet from the exudation of a thin, wa- 
tery, effete semen, possessing no adequate vitality, 
and from its ejaculation at a hasty and inefficient 
moment — the ordinary and mutual excitement of the 
act being wanting — impregnation is denied. To 
such, where this is the case, my remedies having a 



Impotence and Sterility. 167 

direct action on the seminal vessels, are well calcu- 
lated to restore tone and impart energy ; and, by 
inducing a healthy secretion of semen, supply the 
female with the indispensable requisites for a fu- 
ture progeny. Of course these remarks exclude 
absolute congenital deformity or ma.l-formation, in 
the absence of which, those cases are comparatively 
very rare, which admit of no relief from medical 
art. 

We go out of the world by the same changes 
almost as those by which we entered it. We begin 
as children, as children we leave off. We return at 
least to the same weak and helpless condition as our 
first. We must have people to lift us, to carry us 
to provide for us nourishment, and even to feed us* 
We again have need of parents — and how wise the 
establishment — we find them again in our children, 
who now take delight in repaying a part of that 
kindness which we showed to them. Children now 
step, as it were, into the place of parents, w T hile our 
weakness transposes us into the place of children. 
The venerable oak, on the other hand, does not en- 
joy the benefit of such a wise regulation. The old 
decayed trunk stands alone and forgotten, and in 
vain endeavours to procure from foreign aid, that 
support and assistance which can be the work only 
of a natural affection, and the bonds of nature. 



168 Medical Treatment. 



MEDICAL TREATMENT. 



In reference to the Medical Treatment of Sensu- 
alism, I wish to urge the perfect unity of character, 
though diversity of individual type, among the va- 
rious forms of disease, resulting from the habit of 
self-pollution. It is not to be expected that the 
same benefit, either in amount or precise description, 
should occur indiscriminately : age, sex, predisposi- 
tion to disease in weaker organs, and a host of modi- 
fying circumstances, tend each, by a different, yet 
downward road, to consign the sufferer to the grave. 
But as to medicinal agents, the uniformity of cause 
is a sufficient argument for no farther deviation in 
the application of a specific, than is rendered neces- 
sary by collateral considerations. The topical em- 
ployment of cold is an ancient remedy ; and direc- 
tion of remedial agents solely to the cerebellum, is 
useful in certain morbidly excited conditions of the 
natural power ; but in that deplorable condition 
resulting from Onanism, these are insufficient or 
inapplicable. The generality of Medical Practi- 
tioners prescribe the following articles, viz : — Peru- 
vian bark, astringents, and tonics of various names; 
narcotics, as opium, henbane, and hemlock ; the 
mineral acids, lime water, certain preparations of 
iron, mercury and lead ; cubebs, copaiba, the blis- 
tering fly, or cantharides. These have been pre- 
scribed alone, or in succession, with various results, 
but affording no permanent benefit to the unfortunate 
sufferer. But the Balm of Zura, combined with 
the tincture of Kilsellii, and tincture of Esconii, 



Medical Treatment. 169 

together with an infusion of the uv a ursi, and Bu- 
chu leaves, will, if judiciously combined and pre- 
scribed, according to the age, constitution and idio- 
syncracy of the patient, restore the parts to their 
formal health and vigor, and remove any impedi- 
ments that may exist by former bad habits. These 
preparations, with others, which are known to the 
author, are calculated to calm unnatural sensibility 
and rouse the lost power of the sexual organs. 

One important secret in the treatment of these 
diseases, is to ell illustrated by the habits of Medical 
Practitioners ; who, when called upon to visit their 
sick friends of the same profession, mostly conceal 
from them the names of the remedies they employ. 
If in any class of diseases concealment is essential to 
success, most assuredly it will be found to be in 
those cases, where the mental and moral manage- 
ment is equally important with the medical treat- 
ment, and confided almost exclusively to the same 
person. Ignorance of the nature and operation of a 
remedy is not (generally speaking) essential to its 
success ; but, if in certain cases, moral influence be 
necessary, and if concealment tend to the establish- 
ment and perpetuation of that influence, it is not 
only justifiable but indispensable. For this reason 
it is not my intention, in a public work, to give pre- 
scriptions of remedies, the doses and combinations 
of which can only depend on the peculiarities of the 
case ; nor do I deem one uniform remedy applicable 
to all the results of sensualism, and I have no faith 
in those advertised and specific nosirwn,s > which 
may be useful or injurious, precisely as unfit, or ac- 
cordant with the peculiar modifications of individual 
constitution, 

15 



170 Medical Treatment 

The peculiarity of my treatment consists in the 
selection, adaptation and application of remedies, 
which, from my own practical experience, have been 
of signal benefit. They act upon the seminal ves- 
sels, and they impart tone without the production of 
irritation ; they strengthen without inflaming or 
temporarily exciting the generative power ; they 
cure by the removal of the proximate cause of de- 
bility and disease, and so, permanently restore the 
lost energies of the system. There are individuals 
who indulge the fond, yet irrational hope, that nature 
is capable of resuming, without assistance, her lost 
powers ; to such, I can only say, that the time which 
is wasted in this delay is precious and irreclaimable, 
and can only tend to perpetuate the habits of hope- 
less imbecility, and render impotence permanent. 
Many of these are prevented from applying for 
medical advice and assistance, through fear, or 
dread of accidental exposure ; in reference to this, 
it is proper to remark, that my general rule is, to 
bum all correspondence, or to return it to the wri- 
ters, on the termination of their case; and only 
under peculiar circumstances is a personal interview 
or application absolutely necessary. It would have 
been a matter of no difficulty to me, to detail the 
histories of hundreds of cases, which have been 
treated most successfully ; in which the most de- 
plorable forms of nervous or generative debility, 
impotence, sterility, nocturnal emissions, seminal 
weakness, indigestion, approaching insanity and con- 
sumption, as well as syphilitic and constitutional 
diseases, have been exchanged for health, vigour 
and happiness ; but this would have augmented the 
size of the work most inconveniently, and there are 



Medical Treatment. 171 

many whose delicacy would resent the transcript of 
their cases, even under anonymous initials. 

In conclusion, I beg to suggest a practical exten- 
sion of the benefits I have endeavoured to inculcate. 
It will be an acceptable service to society, if the 
reader, who has attentively, and I hope usefully, 
perused these pages, will forward, with as much 
privacy as may be, under envelope, anonymously or 
otherwise, this little work, to such of his friends or 
■acquaintances, who, as he may have good reason, 
either to know or suspect, have been the secret vic- 
tims of the baneful habit I have described. In this 
way a parent may secretly, yet effectually warn that 
child, to whom, on such a subject, he would feel it 
repulsive to speak. I need only point out this mode 
of performing a humane and charitable action, to 
render obvious its very useful application. 

I have thus endeavoured, candidly, to explain tJie 
purpose of the present effort ; to offer an intelligible 
portraiture of the interruptions to the enjoyment of 
sexual health, and by explaining the causes in a sim- 
ple, forcible, and perspicuous manner, to enable the 
reader to disentangle the apparently inextricable and 
confused maze of his own wandering and diseased 
fancies; to point to the concealed, and it may be unsus- 
pected cause of human suffering ; to the restoration 
-of health, pristine vigour, usefulness, activity and joy- 
ous hilarity. Why do I suffer? — why, when all 
around me invites to enjoyment — why is it, that 
while every face wears a smile, existence to me is a 
dreary blank ? — the world, its pleasures, cares and 
duties, an irksome weariness. Are not these ques- 
tions, which even a cursory glance at the previous 
pages will enable the misguided to solve ; long ex- 



172 Medical Treatment. 

perience of human nature, extensive acquaintance 
with some of its most painful infirmities, enable me 
to say it will be so. I am bound to confess that it 
is not only by the relief I have afforded that my 
practice has become so extensive. 

Many of my correspondents have informed me, that 
they were first emboldened to apply by the convic- 
tion that their secret must remain for ever undivulged, 
requiring no name, (if my patient be desirous to 
conceal it,) and not on all occasions an interview. I 
am enabled to afford relief without even knowing 
the residence of the parties who receive it at my 
hands, and this certainty of concealment is to many 
a great satisfaction, nevertheless it is unnecessary, 
for on no occasion has the slightest suspicion ever 
been excited. Inviolable secrecy and certain relief, 
are the boons then I offer to suffering humanity. 
'That I have these in my power to bestow, number- 
less cases sufficiently attest. I make no pretensions 
but such as are borne out by the fullest testimonies, 
and of the authenticity of my testimonies I am pre- 
pared to give every proof short of a disclosure of 
the confidence intrusted to me, that which I know 
of private individuals shall, for life, be locked in my 
breast, in all else I am open as .day to the eye of 
scrutiny.* But I have verified in my practice the 
sincere pleasure which results to the philanthropic 
practitioner, from the conscious feeling that disease 
has been removed, the pangs of suffering relieved, 
and the withering child of affliction snatched from the 
bed of torment and decay, to be restored to health, 
to comfort, and to society. 

- - ■ . — I 1 — ' ——- 7" ■- 

* See the 46th page of the Bachelor's Guide. 



TESTIMONIALS. 



THE ANNEXED TESTIMONIALS ARE SELECTED FROM A VO 

LUMNIOUS LIST IN THE AUTHORS POSSESSION, WHICH, 

IF THEY WERE ALL PUBLISHED, WOULD EXTEND 

TO AN INCONVENIENT LENGTH. 

The necessity for their insertion loill be found in the Note to 
pages 41 and 42. 



BY THE COURT OF EXAMINERS 

OF THE 

ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS IN IRELAND. 




These are to Certify, that Mr. Henry Fawcett 
came before us, and having been solemnly and pub- 
licly examined, on two several days, we found him 
duly qualified to practice Surgery and to be elected 
a Member of this College. 

In testimony whereof, We, the Examiners, have 
subscribed our hands, and caused the Seal of the 
College to be hereunto appended, at Dublin, this 
20th day of May, 1824. 

JAMES RESIN, President. 



> Censors. 



S. WILMOT, 
FRANCTS WHITE, 
AR. JACOB, 
WM. HEN. PORTER, 
MAURICE COLLIS, 
ROBT. ADAMS, 

By Order of the Court, 

ROBT. HARRISON, Assistant Secfy. 
15* 



174 Testimonials. 

We, the Presidents and Council, being authorised 
by the Members of the London Hospital Medical 
Society, to confer the distinction of Honorary 
Member on Mr. Henry Fawcett, as a testimony 
of the ability which he has evinced, in attending to 
the duties prescribed by the laws of the Society, 
do hereby, to this DIPLOMA, affix our signatures. 

PRESIDENTS. COUNCIL. 

F. RAMSBOTHAM, M. D. W. COOKE, 

R. R. ROBINSON, JOHN ADAMS, 

THOS. BLIZARD CURLING. GEORGE DALE, and ochers. 

Given at London, 8th February, 1S27. 

W. J. LITTLE, Secretary. 



" OPIFERQUE PER ORBEM DICOR." 

We, the Court of Examiners,, chosen and ap- 
pointed by the Master, Wardens and Assistants, of 
\he Society of the Art and Mystery of Physicians, 
of the City of London, in pursuance of a certain 
Act of Parliament, passed in the 59th year of the 
reign of his Majesty King George the Third, enti- 
tled " An Act for the better regulating the Practice 
of Physicians, throughout Great Britain and Ireland,' 5 
do hereby, by virtue of the power and authority in 
us vested, by the said act, certify, that Henry 
Fawcett has been, by us, carefully and deliberately 
examined, as to his skill and abilities in the Science 
and Practice of Medicine, and as to his fitness and 
qualification to practice ; and we do hereby, for and 
on behalf of the Master, Wardens and Society, fur- 



Testimonials. 175 

iher certify, the said Henry Fawcett is duly quali- 
fied to practice as a Physician and Surgeon, in any 
part of Great Britain and Ireland. 

Dated this 11th day of April, at London, 1828. 
JOHN BACOT, Chairman. 

ALLEN WILLIAMS, JOHN RIDEOUT, 

H. ROBINSON, H. C FIELD, 

HENRY BLATCH, E.L.WHEELER, 

SAMUEL MERRIMAN, EDWARD TEGART. 
THOMAS HARDY, 

JOHN WATSON, Secretary. 



In preseniia 

Collegii Regii Chirurgorum Edinensium. 

Hisce Uteris testatum volumus virum ingeniosum 
Henricum Fawcett examini sese subjecisse, et 
quaestionibus de rebus Anatomieis, Chirurgicis, et 
Pharmaceuticis, ei propositis responsa satis apta et 
docta publice reddidisse, ita ut nobis judicio pollere 
studia diligenter coluisse, et ad Artem Chirurgicam 
exercendam quam maxime paratus esse videatur. 

I Edinburgi, die sexto mensis Angusti, anno 1825. 
J. H. WISTARD, Preses. 

HENERTCUS JOHNSTON, ADAMUS PIE, 

J. KEITH, DAVID McLOGAN, 

ADAMUS HUNTER, JOANNES LAIRD, 

GEORGIUS BELLINGAN, JOSEPHUS BELL, 
DAVID HAY, 



176 Testimonials. 

Nosocomium Parturientium Coombense. 

His Uteris testor Henricum Fawcett per sex 
menses praxi et prcetectionibus de arte obstetrica, 
in hoc nosocomio diligenter animum intendisse. In- 
super ipsum de sua hujusce artis peritia necnon de 
principus et curatione morborum foeminis et infan- 
tibus, incidentium examinationem apte sustinuisse 
atque apprime scienter respondisse. 
Apud nosocomium Coombense, die primo Junis, 1829. 

Ricardus Reed Gregory, Profectus. 

Rest. C. I. O'Hara. 



Omnibus has [Lit eras Visuris Salutem. 

Quandoquidem Gradus Academici eum in finem 
ihstituti Suerint, lit viri ingenio et doctrina praditi 
titutis prseter casteros insignirentor, eo ut ipsis prosit 
nee non aliorum provocetur industria et inter homines 
studium Virtutis et Bonarum Literarum augeatur, 
Quando etiam hue potissimum spectant amplissima 
ilia jura nostro Collegio publico Diplomate collata. 
Idcirco, notum sit, quod nos, Prseses et Professores 
Collegii Jeffersoniensis, in Republica Pennsylva- 
niensi, Henricum Faivcett, virum probum, nobis 
devinctissimum propter mores benevolos et omnes 
eas artes qua optimum quemque ornant, qui etiam 
scientia eximia in Arte Medica, aque ac Chirurgica, 
nostro Collegio sibi acquisita, nobisque examinatione 
publice habita plenius manifesta, se dignum Ampli- 
simis Honoribus Academicis ostendit, Doctorum in 
Arte Medendi, creavimus et constituimus. Eique 



Testimonials. 177 

prafato, Henrico Fawcett, hujus Diplomatis virtute, 
singula jura, Honores et Privilegia ad Gradum Doc- 
toris in arte Medendi, inter nos et ubique gentium 
pertinentia libentissime et plenissime concessimus 
et rata fecimus. 

Incujus rei fidem, Heec Membrana, Chirographis 
nostris subscripta, et Sigillo Collegii nostri munita, 
testimonio sit. 

Datum in Aula Medicinati nostra, in Urbe Phili- 
delphia, mensis Martu die xir, anno humana salutus 
mdcccxxxiv, Annoque Rerum Publicarum America 
Foederatarum Summa Potestatis lviii. 

ASHBEL GREEN, D. D., L. L. D., Prases. 

GRANVILLE S. PATTISON,M.D., Prof. Anatomy. 

GEORG1US M'CLELLAN, M.D., Chirur. Prof. 

J. REVERE, M.D., Theory Prax., Med. Prof. 

S. M'CLELLAN, M.D., Obstet. Prof. 

JACOB GREEN, M.D., Chemical Prof. 

S. CALHOUN, M.D., Materia Medica Prof. 



STATE OF LOUISIANA. 



Medical Board of Examiners. 

Know all Men, by these presents, that We, the 
President and Members of the Medical Board of 
Examiners, do hereby authorize Henry Fawcett, 
M. D., to exercise the Profession of Physic and 
Surgery throughout the State of Louisiana, and 
enjoy all the benefits and privileges to the same. 

Given at the City of New Orleans, the 25th day 
of June, anno domini 1839. 

T. LABATAT, M.D., President. 

JNCX RICARDIS, M. D., ) 

JAS. JONES, M. D., V Members. 

EWD. PORTY, M. D., ) 

M. MARTIN, Secretary. 



NOTICE TO PATIENTS, 

Doctor Fawcett having, for many years, exclu- 
sively directed his attention to the successful treat- 
ment of the Generative and Nervous System 
described in the preceding pages, may be consulted 
daily, either personally or by letter, at his Office, 
196 Fulton- Street, New-York. 



COUNTRY PATIENTS 

are informed, that by forwarding their communica- 
tion, per post or otherwise, they can have the neces- 
sary remedies sent to any address, in a portable 
compass, carefully packed and free from observation, 
and they may be taken without confinement or 
hindrance from business. Patients are requested to 
be as minute as possible in the detail of their cases 2 
their symptoms, age, general habits of living and 
occupation in life. The communication must be 
accompanied with the usual Consultation Fee of 
Five Dollars, without which no notiie zuhatever 
can be taken of their application ; and in all cases 
the most inviolable secrecy may be relied on, as all 
letters are either returned to the writers, or des- 
troyed at the termination of each case, 



m 



lRBAg?8 






LIBRARY 




